Tom 'Durrrr' Dwan's Poker Challenge BeginsDwan is Up About $135,000 After First Session |
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It has started.
The emotion that those three words elicit for railbirds might only rival the enthusiasm a 10-year-old feels when he hears the words, “Today is Christmas.”
After months of speculation and hours of arguing whether or not Tom “durrrr” Dwan’s famous poker challenge would actually occur, the challenge has officially begun.
The ‘challenge,’ of course, refers to the terms put out by Dwan in Card Player magazine. He offered to pay $1.5 million (while his opponent would only have to put $500,000 on the side) as an incentive to any player who could beat him over 50,000 hands at four simultaneous heads-up online tables at minimum stakes of $200-$400 in either pot-limit Omaha or no-limit Texas hold’em.
Dwan e-mailed Card Player at 6:15 a.m. EST today to announce that the challenge was indeed starting. Dwan said that he and Patrik Antonius played 1,541 hands — or approximately 3 percent of the 50,000 hands that are required for the challenge — in their first session. Dwan finished the session up $134,911.50.
The young online phenom publicly proposed the poker challenge in January, and it didn’t take long for some of his top peers to respond. Phil Ivey and David Benyamine initially showed interest in taking the 22-year-old on, with Ivey accepting the challenge first. That same week, Antonius soon followed suit and notified CardPlayer.com that he was accepting the offer, as well.
After the pros worked out the details and their schedules, it was decided that the Finnish star would have the first crack at Dwan.
“I didn’t have to persuade Phil and David too much (to let me go first),” Antonius said today. “They know that they will get their chance after me.”
Dwan has said that he will “definitely play one, almost definitely play two, and probably all three unless the first two went extremely terribly.”
Antonius said today that he expects the challenge will take anywhere between four and six months to complete. The pro is currently in Thailand and said that he and Dwan will play as often as they can, but that it might be difficult to get a regular game going. However, Antonius expects to have a lot of time on his hands in a few weeks when he spends a month in Monaco.
Although either player can call off the challenge prematurely and pay off the side bet, both players have said that it is doubtful that they will do that.
“I don’t know the meaning of the word ‘quit,’” said Antonius.
As of now, the challenge does not have a set schedule because the players often don’t know very far in advance when they’ll have the free time on their hands. But railbirds can watch out for the action on Full Tilt Poker at the new “durrrr Challenge” tables in the ‘Omaha Hi’ cash game section.
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