the durrr challenge is turning into a slumber fest

The off again-on again nature of the durrr challenge is causing it to lose steam—at least I’m beginning to lose interest in a match that will seemingly never be finished—but they did play yesterday, during four choppy session that comprised a total of 2,040 hands.

Tom Dwan won almost $82,000 for the day, and now holds a lead of $1.2 million over Patrik Antonius. However, what should have been an exciting, bigger-money-than-anything-ever-played-for-before poker game, is dragging on and on and on. At this point, they’ve played slightly more than 27,000 hands, and have something less than 23,000 left to play. At their current pace, most everyone will have another birthday or two before they are finished.

What would have made this match special—and clearly the equal of the Johnny Moss vs. Nick the Greek match that took place in the window of Binion’s Horseshoe and was responsible for popularizing poker in Las Vegas oh so many years ago, was that Moss and the Greek played every day and the match was a daily drama.

This one is turning into coitus interruptus, and while the sums wagered are still enormous, the drama has morphed into glacially-paced boredom. They can still bring back the excitement by playing out the remaining hands on a daily, or almost daily basis, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. And with this match taking forever to complete, it doesn’t seem like the other challenge matches durrr had planned will come to fruition either. And that’s sad. This had all the makings of the greatest poker match of all time. Instead, it seems to be dying on the vine.