Home / Poker News February 2009 / Durrrr challenge opening session report
Durrrr challenge opening session report
Posted by: James Carter. - Sun, 2009-02-22 11:43
The “Durrrr challenge” is under way with the first 1,541 hands of the planned 50,000 already played between Tom Dwan and Patrik Antonius, the first challenger of a line which includes Phil Ivey and David Benyamine.
According to the challenge rules put forth by durrrr in a statement a couple of months ago, if, at the end of the 50,000 PLO hands he is even a cent up on his opponent, he wins the $500,000 wagered by the challenger. If he’s down, he’ll pay his opponent $1.5 million, plus the money he gives up during actual play.
The challenge has apparently started off well for Tom Dwan who goes by the online name “durrrr”. After the first leg of his match against Patrik Antonius, he is up $134,911.5 The 50,000 hands were obviously broken up into several sessions, the first one of which was played on 4 of the 8 special tables reserved for durrrr’s challenge at Full Tilt Poker.
Skill is extremely important in PLO, and it obviously doesn’t hurt if Lady Luck sides with you either. Durrrr could have no complaints in either respect in his first session. He flopped set after set and successfully hammered home his advantage against Antonius’ draws which failed to fill up. The two monster pots which pretty much made up durrrr’s final advantage went his way at the end of two such hands too.
The first hand saw Dwan’s J,10,10,3 go up against Antonius’ J,8,6,4. The flop landed 10,7,5 and gave durrrr a set, while giving Antonius a straight draw. A 2 fell on the turn, and after a few bet-raise-re-raise orbits, Antonius went all-in. The J on the river failed to fill Antonius’ draw though and thus Dwan scored the first monster pot.
Another pot which eventually got stuffed to $134,631 saw all the money go in on a flop of Q,9,6. Dwan held J,10,6,6 for a set, while Antonius could only muster a A,Q,8,3 for the top pair and nut flush draw. The turn gave durrrr a full house for the win.
Yet another monster pot, a $114,484 found its way to Dwan’s stack after his flush made short work of Antonius’ straight draw.
The second session of the challenge match-up was postponed indefinitely.
