The second Durrrr challenge for Tom Dwan, aka Durrrr, has gone from good to bad to worse for the man it is named after. Dwan, who has yet to complete his first challenge with Patrik Antonius, must have a breaking point but as yet nobody knows what it is. If things don’t turn around in this second Texas Hold’em poker challenge we may find out soon.
To be involved in two challenges Dwan has taken $3 million of his bankroll and locked it up in escrow. Since getting Antonius to finish the first challenge has been about as successful as keeping bed bugs out of New York City who knows when Dwan will see the 1.5 million he put up or the 500k he’s slated to win if he plays out the string. Right now, Dwan is reeling in his second challenge. Maybe it’s the lack of Omaha internet pokeras they’ve played almost exclusively Texas hold’em.
A first session was quickly followed by a second one and Dwan’s early lead (the good), became a big deficit (the bad), and now after the third session the hole has only gotten deeper. Cates is now up almost 700k on dwan. All told the kid is out almost 4 million dollars from his bankroll in either losses or escrow. True, he’s extended a massive lead over Antonius and that could count as a positive to his bankroll to lessen his obligations. What can’t be denied is that since starting the challenge Dwan has watched almost 2.2 million leave his hands and he may chase that over the next 43k worth of hands and never get it back.
Things weren’t all bad for Dwan as he did manage to win the biggest pot of the session which is not necessarily a good thing as his losses still piled on. Against Patrik Antonius it was the Finn who usually won the bigger pots as Dwan more pots. Roles seem to reversing this time with jungleman12 winning in the higher volume of pots and Dwan the bigger individual pots.
In the biggest hand, 132k pot that saved Dwan from even bigger losses, Durrrr turned a set of 10s. The board read board reading Kh-8d-3c-10h-2c. Out of nowhere on the river the players steadily bet into each other with raises. Not much fanfare early in the hand saw jungleman12 put the remainder of his chips into the pot.
Even without that pot, and paying of Dwan’s slightly hidden set, Daniel “jungleman12″ Cates increased his lead in the “durrrr Challenge” and is now up a whopping $692,000 after a total of 6,820 hands. That’s a win rate of $100 per hand (oddly close to the same win rate Dwan had over Cates to start). Extend that over 50,000 hands and Cates would win 5 million in a addition to the 1.5 million sitting in Phil Ivey’s account.
Must be nice to be young twenty year olds and to be able to afford to give somebody a half million or one and a half million to hold on to. Meanwhile, as they lose even a modest interest rate on the money (which for some would be a nice source of income) they’ve been racing to the finish line to try and finish in a timely fashion.
The third installment of “jungleman12″ vs Tom “durrrr” Dwan was the shortest yet. They played a short session of less than 1,000 hands with “jungleman12″ adding another 173k to his profits. The reason for our concern about Durrrr’s overall balance sheet was the fact he nursing sitting on short stacks and short short stacks on several of the “durrrr Challenge” tables. Then after things went south he abandoned the challenge and gave it up for the morning.
Going back just a short time ago when things wer “good” for Durrrr, he had gotten off to a strong start in the second “durrrr Challenge”, going up almost $130k over1,651 hands. Since things got bad and then worse as Jungleman12 has been an absolute jungle beast winning about $820k over the next 5,000+ hands.
Durrrr needs to turn around the dismal start to things quickly. Granted he lost a ton to Patrik Antonius in stretches of their Challenge but he overcame the half million deficit and transformed it into a nearly two million advantage. He needs to start changing gears soon though.