Tom Dwan and Patrick Antonius have battled it out in a series of online poker sessions.  Yet, the last two have been brief.  And before yesterday’s session many speculated the challenge had already fizzled out.  The previous one was but 226 hands.  Yesterday’s was slightly longer with 914 hands.  Supposedly they will do battle, again, today.

The challenge consists of Durrrr vs. one opponent, playing four heads up games, at once, of either no limit hold ‘em or pot limit omaha online poker for50,000 hands.  Dwan is offering 3 to 1 odds.  If his opponent is up even $1, Dwan has to pay 1.5 million.  If he finishes “up” his opponent has to pay him $500,000.  Whatever the winning player is ahead is also his.

In the latest installment, Patrick logged on to play online poker against Dwan and promptly won $87 thousand.  That was a substantial chunk of the lead that Dwan had built up.  The tally now reads:  Dwan up $52,500 after 5,092 hands.   

It’s surprising it has taken this long.  All these guys do for a living is play poker online yet they can’t seem to get together and crank out a ton of hands.  Normally, you would think they’d play ten to twelve hour sessions anyway, so why not battle it out and finish the challenge.

Of course, there is the thought the longer they extend this, and move at a glacial pace, the more they stay in the spotlight with bloggers like myself analyzing the action.  Dwan is getting the type of PR many experts at that game, Hellmuth, Negreanu, and even Brunson would kill for.  In fact, Barry Greenstein recently credited the kid for doing just that.

It’s still very early in the challenge but he has to be happy he’s got a lead and things haven’t gone too far in one direction for either player.

Before there was some worry that the challenge would break one of the participants, Dwan currently without a sponsor, perhaps the guy most people were worried about, but if anything this is notoriety is going to increase his already high asking price.  Looks like win or lose, the Durrrr brand is going to profit.