After two months of no action in the Durrrr Challenge, many of the high-stakes railbirds began chirping about the possibility that the million-dollar bet’s hiatus might be permanent. Despite the recent announcement that the Durrrr Challenge was going live in London, Tom “durrrr” Dwan‘s action against Full Tilt pro Patrik Antonius had slowed to a snail’s pace, with no action at the Challenge tables and no talk of play resuming.
Dwan posed his now infamous Challenge at the beginning of the year. He offered 2:1 odds on a $500,000 bet that he could beat a player heads-up online over the course of 50,000 hands at either $200/$400 No Limit Hold’em or Pot Limit Omaha. Antonius was the first player to step up to the plate and the two have been battling on and off since February. After a fast start, Challenge play has been infrequent, with the duo putting in just a couple of sessions with weeks off in between.
Earlier this month, durrrr’s focus appeared to be squarely on the mysterious “martonas,” who burst onto Full Tilt’s high-stakes scene this summer. While martonas got off to a profitable start, after several epic sessions with durrrr, Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond, and others, his winnings dissipated. Meanwhile, durrrr racked up over $2 million in profit last week, the bulk of which came courtesy of martonas.
Perhaps hoping to capitalize on his upswing, durrrr resumed Challenge play on Monday afternoon for nearly two hours before calling it a day. Unfortunately for durrrr, his recent success did not carry over to his Challenge match, as Antonius cut durrrr’s overall lead of $726,000 in half. Over the course of 795 hands, Antonius turned a profit of $392,347.50 before durrrr cited fatigue and called it a day. Their session-ending chat indicated that they planned to continue logging hands in the Challenge:
durrrr: too tired, gonna try to sleep for a few hrs, mayb we can play later if ur free when i wakeup, gn
Patrik Antonius: ok
They didn’t resume play later that day, but returned to the tables on Tuesday evening for a lengthy session. The two battled for four hours, playing a total of 1,241 hands. Antonius once again logged a hugely profitable day and, at one point, had almost $1 million spread over the four Challenge tables. He completely erased durrrr’s overall lead and was starting to put together a sizeable cushion of his own before durrrr retaliated by winning the biggest pot of the night (worth nearly $230,000).
By the end of play on Tuesday, Antonius emerged with the overall lead, but only a relatively small $76,104. While that may sound like a big number, it is the size of a modest pot at the Challenge tables. Both of this week’s sessions saw Dwan and Antonius sparring in smaller pots. There were several hands in which the two got it all-in for six figures, but there were none of the $400,000+ pots that headlined their June session. In fact, only a couple of pots eclipsed the $200,000 mark.
One such pot causing a lot of discussion on the forums and elsewhere is the aforementioned $229,558 one won by durrrr on Tuesday. The action in the hand was raised back and forth five times before the flop and Antonius made a pot-sized bet after the board came Qc-9h-2c. Durrrr moved all-in for slightly more than Antonius’ bet and Antonius called with his A-A-K-2 for an overpair of aces. Durrrr turned up 9-7-5-3 for a pair of nines and needed quite a bit of help to take down the hand. Help arrived on the turn with the 3c, giving durrrr two pair. The two pair held with the 8c on the river and the pot was shipped to durrrr.
