Antonius Up Nearly $500,000 in durrrr Challenge

I’ve been reporting periodically on the durrrr challenge, and Patrik Antonius’ recent winning session took another $328,000 from Dwan during the course of slightly less than 300 hands. That puts Antonius up $488,133, with 13,250 hands played. With a total of 50,000 hands to be played, this gives Antonius a nice lead at the end of the first quarter.

Because the two players typically sit down with $40,000 in front of them at each of their four tables—and have played pots in excess of $200,000—a half million dollar deficit is not insurmountable.

Still, it’s my opinion that Dwan made a bad bet when he offered 3-to-1 odds to any player willing to go 50,000 hands of either no-limit hold’em or pot-limit Omaha on four tables simultaneously. According to the terms of the wager, if Dwan comes out ahead even as little as a dollar after 50,000 hands, he wins an additional $500,000 on top of his winnings. If an opponents wins, Dwan will pay him $1.5 million.

Antonius, Phil Ivey, and David Benyamine all accepted. But to come out a winner, at the end of the day Dwan will have to beat all three opponents to do so. Given the quality of their play, that’s a tough task, even if Dwan handles multitabling better than most poker players.