When you think of online poker, the thing that rouses the most excitement is probably the durrrr challenge. The shear amount of action involved and the quality of the poker being played is enough to get anyone’s heart racing, or it would be if any cards were actually being dealt. As it currently stands things are pretty quiet, however, but at least it gives us a chance to review how the challenge has gone thus far.
The challenge itself, of course, was issued by Tom “durrrr” Dwan to the entire poker community with the sole exception of Phil Galfond, and is reasonably simple. 50,000 hands of heads-up online poker, either No Limit Hold’Em or Pot Limit Omaha at stakes of $200/$400 or higher, on at least four tables simultaneously. The twist being that, if at the end of the 50,000 hands the challenger is up by as little as a dollar then he receives an additional $1.5 Million, whereas if durrrr is up he is only entitled to an additional $500,000. These are great odds, but durrrr is among the best in the world, especially in the online arena, so it’s certainly not easy money.
The first person to take on the challenge was Finnish pro Patrik Antonius, who opted for four-tabling Pot Limit Omaha for the duration of the challenge. Despite playing their first hand many, many months ago now, the two are yet to reach the end of the marathon battle. They’re currently at around the 40,000 hand mark, and durrrr is up over $2 Million, leaving Antonius in a fairly deep hole, with only 10,000 hands to dig himself out of it if he wants to come out on top.
Much more recently it was announced that a second challenge would be run simultaneously, this time against Daniel “jungleman12” Cates. A much different breed of player to Antonius, jungleman12 finds himself at home on the online felt like durrrr, and opted for playing eight simultaneous tables of No Limit Hold’Em. The two have played over 7,500 of the required hands in a fairly short space of time – especially in comparison to the play against Antonius – and as it currently stands durrr is down over $650,000. That said, there’s a long way to go yet and durrrr didn’t earn his reputation as the best online player in the world by chance, so time will tell how the rest of the match plays out.
While things have been fairly quiet lately, you never can tell when the players are going to surface from the woodwork and start putting in sessions, sending the railbirds into a frenzy of excitement. If you want to join in on the fun of watching literally hundreds of thousands of dollars float across the screen, then you’ll need to check out our Bovada Poker Download as that’s where all the action is taking place.