The “durrrr” challenge limped closer to completion. Patrick Antonius and Tom “durrrr” Dwan sat down in front of their pcs (or maybe they chose to play poker on a mac) and with little taps of their forefingers played another 883 hands of Texas Hold’em and Omaha. The challenge requires 50,000 hands. 883 out of 50,000 is… about 1.7%.

Without any massive pots or railbird euphoria inducing plays Dwan steadily chipped up and added to his lead. With an additional 315k or poker winnings over the big Scandinavian, Dwan has to be feeling good. The three hour session was reward in itself especially for a player playing his way out of a downswing. The lead has grown to 1.39 million. As Dwan seems to be recovering from a downswing and picking himself off the mat, Antonius is in the midst of his own. 2009 has not been good to Patrik and Dwan getting healthy off him in the challenge isn’t making things better.

Should they wrap up the challenge this year it’s looking more and more likely Dwan will not only win what they wager in each heads up clash he’ll also pocket a half-million from Patrik for winning the bet.

There is hope for Patrik considering he has 17,000 hands left to play. If Dwan can win 315k in 883 who’s to say Patrik can’t win 1.39 million plus over the remainder of the challenge. However, there needs to be a significant shift in momentum. Antonius has been looking up to Dwan for the last 10 thousands hands. And the lead has incrementally grown.

That being said, should Patrik reverse fields it won’t be the first time he’s done it in poker and for that matter it won’t be the first time he’s done it in the challenge. At one point last year Dwan had methodically grown his lead to almost the 1.39 lead he has now. Somewhere near 1.2 million Dwan watched his lead dissipate like sweat in the desert. A couple thousand hands later and it was Patrik with the lead.

The counter to that point is that was then and this is now. The dynamics have changed. Dwan perhaps took a few more risks than normal to maybe blow open the challenge and accumulate an unbeatable lead. It was early enough for risks and maybe that played into Antonius’ hands. The former Finnish tennis player (by the way he was no Jarkko Nieminen) parried the challenges and patiently took advantage of Dwan’s risk taking.

Dwan does not strike even the casual observer as a player willing to sit on his chips and he didn’t build his lead by being afraid to put his chips into play, so maybe he will leave some hope for Patrik. If Dwan doesn’t pull back, now almost two thirds into the challenge it’s literally anybody’s game. If he does maintain or build his lead and then rests comfortably on his stack Antonius may have to talk buy-out.

Let’s say with 45,000 hands played and 5,000 to go Dwan is at a 1 million lead. Just to tie the youngster Antonius would need to incredibly win $200 a hand… every hand. At some point, even the capricious gambler that Dwan is, he’d have to protect his lead and small pot Patrik. How could Antonius hope to win it all back? If Dwan’s downswing bubbles up again, the money in his challenge might be too valuable for him to not play conservatively.

Of late the pots aren’t near the size they were just one year ago, so perhaps Dwan has already started to reel back. Antonius won’t be easily beaten and the difference in the lead isn’t anywhere close enough for Dwan to think it’s over. If you are one of the fans still following the Challenge, that’s good news for you, your marathon fan-hood carries on and there may yet still be some drama to wring out of this year long competition.