Maybe it’s officially getting out of hand. Maybe it’s time for Dan “jungleman12” Cates to call off the dogs. On Friday morning, action in the ongoing Durrrr Challenge saw Cates widen his lead to over a million dollars over Tom “durrrr” Dwan. He’s officially up $1.2 million and a total of 18,236 hands have been played out of the 50,000 needed for the challenge to be complete.
A 780-hand session played out on Friday, the first action in the Durrrr Challenge since March 8th. The largest pot of the day weighed in at $127,000 and saw Dwan raise to $1,200 before the flop. Cates pushed the action to $4,000 and Dwan called to bring a rainbow flop of 5-6-7. Cates made a continuation bet of $4,800 and Dwan once again put his opponent to the test, this time raising to $12,500.
Cates responded by shoving all-in for $59,000 and Dwan called, setting up the $127,000 goliath. When the hands were revealed, both players had the goods. Dwan showed 6-5 for bottom two pair, while Cates tabled 8-7 for top pair and an open-ended straight draw.
As has been customary in this cycle of the Durrrr Challenge, the turn and river were run twice. In the first, running jacks gave Cates the win with jacks and sevens. The second board filled out 9-4, giving Cates a straight. When the smoke cleared on the 780-hand session, Cates had profited $270,000 and was up $1.2 million overall. However, 32,000 more hands must still be played.
Cates immediately headed to Twitter, where he posted to his 5,400 followers, “Won $270K, ran really hot… Now time to play $25/$50 lol.” A few days earlier, Cates posted on Twitter that he had dropped $50,000 to PokerStars pro Viktor “Isildur1” Blom across six tables of $50/$100.
Friday’s session ran from 4:15am ET to 6:00am ET and, despite its off-hour, there were plenty of railbirds watching the action. One poster on TwoPlusTwo lamented, “It seems like durrrr just can’t ever run good, sigh.” Another poster echoed the same sentiments, typing, “Jungleman is a great player obv and, not to take anything away from him, but he is really running pretty sick hot atm!”
Out of the five largest pots of Friday’s session, Cates walked away with the win in four of them for a combined haul of nearly $400,000. Dwan won the second largest pot of the day, which was worth $117,000, after spiking a set of jacks on the turn.
Dwan was apparently on an airplane when the two met at the tables yesterday. In the chat log on a Full Tilt Poker table, the following conversation took place, which ended the session:
durrrr: dont think i should play more
jungleman12: ok
durrrr: getting shakier + little turbulence
durrrr: err intnet shakier i mean
jungleman12: yeah, thought shakier= turbulence
durrrr: heh both
durrrr: prolly go together somewhat not sure
durrrr: neway txt ya later if im awake enough to play might jus sleep tho gg
jungleman12: ok gg
When we’ll see the two pros play again is anyone’s guess. Friday’s activity marked just the third time the Durrrr Challenge has been held in 2011 after the battle got underway last August.
Stay tuned to Poker News Daily for the latest and be sure to visit our sister site, DurrrrChallenge.com, for highlights.
