On Monday afternoon, the action in the Million Dollar Challenge between Tom “durrrr” Dwan and Dan “JungleMan12” Cates continued on Full Tilt Poker. Once again, Cates dominated and this time vaulted out to a $692,000 lead over the youngster. A total of 6,820 hands have been played.
It’s hard to believe that Dwan and Cates are nearly 15% of the way through the 50,000 hands required for completion. With the first incarnation of the Durrrr Challenge being 19 months old, the second has seemed to zip by. Mid-afternoon play on Monday was the first between Dwan and Cates since late last week, when Cates jumped out to a $518,000 lead.
According to stats found on Full Tilt Poker’s blog, Cates has posted a win rate of 25.33 BB/100 and has taken down 61.4% of hands. Dwan, meanwhile, has mustered wins in just 37.9% of hands and lodged a VPIP (Voluntarily Put Money into the Pot) of 65.1%. Cates’ VPIP is 69.4% by comparison.
There were several major split pots on Monday given Dwan and Cates running it twice during the course of the challenge. In one, the money went in on a 7-2-4-J board with Cates holding pocket aces for an overpair and Dwan showing J-2 for top and bottom pair. The first river was a king, shipping half the pot to Dwan, but an ace on the second river gave Cates the other half of the $96,000 in the middle.
Dwan then scooped a $54,000 pot with K-10 for the nuts on a 7-J-8-Q-A board. Dwan also took down a $131,000 pot after turning a set of tens on a K-8-3-10-2 board. Cates’ cards were not revealed in the latter hand after calling the all-in. In a separate hand, Dwan was all-in with pocket queens after a flop of 5-J-4 with two clubs. Cates held A-10 of the suit for the nut flush draw, but amazingly none of the four turn and river cards brought a third club to the board. Dwan landed a $71,000 pot and seemed to be well off early.
After a 3bet pre-flop, Dwan and Cates checked the action to the river on a 2-10-K-5-7 four-heart board. Then, the fireworks went off. Holding 9-3 of spades, Dwan led out for $4,800 and Cates made it $15,600 with the nut flush. Dwan re-raised to $27,800 and Cates made the call to scoop the $62,000 pot. On why Cates just called the river with the nuts instead of coming over the top, one poster on TwoPlusTwo speculated, “jungle pbb knew durrrr wasn’t gonna call a shove & wanted to see his hand.”
Dwan started the encounter by posting on Twitter, “Playing jungleman again, hopefully it goes better than last time.” That obviously didn’t work, as Cates Tweeted after the match had wrapped up, “won another 173k, so far up almost 700k in almost 7k hands.” The thread following the match on TwoPlusTwo stood at nearly 150 pages at the time of writing as the poker community looked on in awe.
Around 3:15pm ET, Dwan exited the tables after the beat down, with one poster on TwoPlusTwo reporting, “Durrrr just completely sat out without any chat.” Another community member inquired, “What are the chances durrrr buys out of this after 1 or 2 more sesh’s like this one? I doubt he’d buy out no matter how bad he runs/gets owned, but this challenge could kick his ass pretty hard.”
When the action will resume is anyone’s guess. Dwan had expressed interest in finishing the second installment of the Durrrr Challenge prior to the World Series of Poker Europe schedule beginning in two weeks. Meanwhile, Dwan has been dominating the first running against Patrik Antonius, but there has been no play since August 3rd.
