The first week of the Tom “Durrrr” Dwan challenge has come to an end. After some big swings Dwan finds himself up nearly $150,000 (or slightly under 4 buy-ins) on Patrik Antonius. The swings have been huge, as are the stakes. In the end one of these two players will walk away the victor and either $500,000 or $1,500,000 richer.
So far Antonius has been running quite well in some Pre-Flop all-ins while Dwan has been running even better in the biggest pots. The two largest pots, both over $164,000, have gone to Dwan. In the first of the two big pots Dwan’s overpair+flush draw out ran a flopped set from Antonius in a 4bet pot. In the other pot Antonius ran a huge bluff over 200bb deep only to run into Dwan’s flopped (and slowplayed) nut-straight.
Early on things went quite well for Durrrr as he was up nearly $200,000 approximately 1500 hands in. However, Antonius would mount a huge comeback a few day later, winning nearly $300,000 in a 1500 hand session. Unfortunately for Antonius the third and final session of the week went Dwan’s way, as Durrrr won over $200,000, leaving him nearly 4 buy-ins ahead. The match has lasted 12.5 hours with nearly 4,000 hands being played.
The pace of the match has been quite slower compared to other high-stakes games. Both players have played a bit more passively than in the past and the lack of 3betting PF has been noticeable. On top of this the matches seem to be going quite slowly. So far the players are averaging approximately 75 hands/hour on each table meaning the two are only getting in 300 hands an hour. At this current pace (both h/hr and sessions/week) this challenge could easily stretch deep into May and even June. The matches seem to have been slowed a bit by an abundance of $500/$1000 games running lately. More than once the challenge has been put on hold because either player would rather play the bigger games.
The challenge is set to resume soon, most of the sessions have been played early in the morning as it seems Antonius is in Thailand for the time being. Make sure to log into FullTilt and check under the Omaha tab at the $200/$400 tables, you might just catch a piece of history.