The challenge begins

Today Tom "Durr" Dwan and Patrik Antonius started their 50,000 hand face-off. The players will spread four tables of Omaha and NL Hold 'Em for 50k hands. If Dwan is ahead at the end of the match, he wins an additional $500k from Antonius. If PA is ahead, he wins $1.5 million.

So far at the end of 1,541 hands played today, the totals look like this:

durrrr's results: +$134,911
Patrik Antonius's results: -$135,209

You can see regular updates at Highstakesdb.

Summarizing the challenge:

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.

Antonius Officially Accepts Durrrr's Challenge

Shortly after Tom "durrrr" Dwan's Heads up poker challenge was made public, a few names were thrown around regarding the most likely candidate to take Dwan up on his offer.

As we learned earlier in the week, Ivey has already accepted the challenge and now high stakes pro Patrik Antonius has also officially accepted to take Dwan on as well.

In a recent phone interview with Card Player magazine Antonius discussed just what went through his mind when he first heard about Dwan's offer:

"It sounded too good to be true. I tried to figure out what would be the trap there and I still haven’t really figured it out. But I’m sure he’s really thought about it. For sure, he’s one of the best at the moment.

It’s like Phil Ivey says. He plays anyone, and everybody knows that. I’m basically the same. I mean, obviously I would not play him if it was just even because there’d be much better games out there. But it’s pretty interesting. Even if I lose, it’d probably help my game a lot. I really hate losing though."

He then goes on to discuss who he believes has a better chance of beating Dwan between him and Phil Ivey:

"I mean, it would be kind of stupid to not say me. But Phil Ivey — I’ve said it so many times before — he’s the greatest that I’ve played. He just has something that most people can only dream of. I don’t know how he does it. He just thinks differently. He’s a very smart guy. It’s going to be very interesting to see how they play. In fact, I might want to play second to see how they play."

Click here for the full interview.

Personally, I think out of the three players who have expressed the most interest in taking Dwan's challenge (Ivey, Antonius and Benyamine) Antonius seems like the best suited to succeed. Out of the three, he's the one who actually worked his way up multi tabling online while the other two first emerged on the live scene and then made the transition to online poker. Not to imply that the other two don't stand a chace. I mean, Benyamine is regarded as one of the best pot limit omaha players in the world and Ivey...well Ivey's just Ivey.

Tom Dwan also recently gave an interview on CardPlayer tv about the Challenge so make sure to check that out as well.

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.