Durrrr against the World

Online high stakes poker player Tom "durrrr" Dwan has issued a Challenge to the poker world. And the world has responded.

The challenge, which is outlined in an upcoming issue of Bluff Magazine, basically consists of 50,000 hands of online heads up play spread across 4 tables with minimum stakes of $200/$400. Games being played would include both No Limit Hold Em' and Pot Limit Omaha.

The interesting part comes in the fact that Durrrr is willing to lay 3:1 on his money that he will be ahead by the end of the 50k hands. He's willing to post $1.5 million to his opponents $500,000.

Additional stipulations for the challenge were made clear by Dwan on the 2p2 forums:

"ya i mean this wasnt supposed to be posted yet but w/e. Anyway... there are obv a few conditions, im out of it- but off the top of my head:

1) 200-400min (nl/plo obv)
2) can change tables anytime eff stacks are >250bb
3) have to reload when stacks are <75bb
4) $$ won in the challenge is kept obv (if i win 750k in poker, i get that PLUS your 500k- if i lose 750k in poker you get 2.25m total).
5) same stakes the whole time
6) not open to phil galfond

hmm probly some other stuff but im out of it b/c i jus got owned @ some scrabble. I was gonna think up official 'terms' and post em or something, but thought i had another week or two b4 it became public."

Now, 50,000 hands is no easy task. Even while 4 tabling, with daily 5 hour sessions the challenge could realistically take about a month to complete. But that hasn't stopped several high stakes poker super stars from accepting the challenge. Among them is Phil Ivey, who in the latest episode of PokerRoad's "Tuesdays with Ivey" had an interesting discussion with Barry Greenstein about what exactly accepting the challenge entails.

A good point brought up by Ivey is the fact that 4 tabling $200/$400 is playing pretty damn high and someone could potentially lose upwards of $5 million doing so. Nevertheless Ivey goes on to say that even though Durrrr would probably have a big edge in the beginning, the 3:1 odds are too tempting to turn down and he believes he's been playing with Dwan long enough to be able to adjust to his game.

Anyway, if Ivey does choose to take Durrrr up on the challenge, he'll have to get in line as two other top pros are already on the list. Both Patrik Antonious and David Benyamine are said to have accepted the challenge as well although no word yet on when this is set to begin.

The Crooked Straight will for sure keep you up to date on it.