New Durrrr Full Tilt Commercial

Clever, and Dwan's slowly grown on me as I've watched him on High Stakes Poker the last couple of seasons.

Howard Lederer gets Durrred

This hand is actually from the episode that aired a week ago.

There was a lot of discussion on the poker forums about whether or not Durrrr should have made a continuation bet at any point after the flop. Personally, I think after he hits his 8 on the turn, he's got showdown value and even though Howard Lederer's 4bet flat call before the flop screams AK, Durrrr was still concerned he might be up against a hand like 10-10 or JJ.

Also, make sure not too miss Gabe Kaplans's genius double entendre about Howard not wanting to get back durrred, lol.

Hand starts around the 2:00 mark.

AA vs. KsQs

According to the announcers, this is the highest televised cash game pot ($919,600) in the history of poker.

Tom Dwan cracks Barry Greenstein's aces with his suited king-queen after both players refuse to make a deal.



via golfandpoker

Big day on Full Tilt nosebleeds

*this screen shot is not from yesterday

Today was a big day on Full Tilt in the nose bleed stakes and after it was all said and done, these were the big winners and losers (more action may have occurred in the wee hours):

PLO and Mixed HA results:

Durrrr +$670k
Patrik Antonius +$208k
Phil Ivey +$187k

Gus Hansen -$912k
martonas -$130k
Juggle This -$100k

I can see why these guys don't give a flying duck about tournaments and live games anymore when this kind of cash is being thrown around on the internet. I have no idea who Martonas or Juggle This are, I'm sure the info is available somewhere out there...

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Durrr vs. Antonius update

These two poker powerhouses have now played a total of 7,087 hands (head's up/one-on-one) and Patrik Antonius is up a mere $23,467.

The action has been considerably slower than the poker community expected and because of that this epic challenge has lost a lot of it's luster. I'm wondering if they will even come close to finishing before the WSOP starts because we all know that the big game during the WSOP can kill someone's bankroll in one or two bad sessions (see Brian Townsend aka SBRugby).

Here are the results of their last session:

Session 10:
Table 1) TD -$6,815.00 PA +$6,790.00 109 hands
Table 2) TD +$43,038.50 PA -$43,063.50 113 hands
Table 3) TD -$120,353.50 PA +$120,329.00 109 hands
Table 4) TD -$7,989.00 PA +$7,966.00 129 hands
82 minutes 460 hands
TD -$92,119.00 PA +$92,021.50

Total to date:
TD -$24,956.00 PA +$23,467.50 22h3m 7,087 hands

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Take your lumps Durrrrrrr

Here's some funny online table chat between Tom "Durr" Dwan, Phil Ivey and David Oppenheim that I found on 2+2:

durrrr: oh can i ask you a golf question?
David Oppenheim: yup
durrrr: im in a match vs phil and i lost 4 days in a row, would it be
ok for me to ask for an adjustment
David Oppenheim: with phil iveyt
durrrr: yea
David Oppenheim: not alllowed to ask for adjustments
David Oppenheim: it just part of growing up
Phil Ivey: my man
durrrr: hahaha amazing
David Oppenheim: you just have to practice sorry bud
durrrr: not actually btw, we were jus curious ur response
durrrr: im sure ill lose 10 in a row @ some pt
David Oppenheim: lol we all have to take are lumps

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Sick Bluff on High Stakes Poker

From episode 2 of the new season of High Stakes Poker on GSN: Tom "Durrrr" Dwan, a newcomer to the show, earns his stripes amongst the more established players at the table by taking down a pot even though he had the weakest of the three hands. [I haven't been able to find a shorter, focused clip, so you'll have to skip to 4:38 in this video.]

Phil Ivey cleans Durrr out in cash game

On Monday Phil Ivey fell short of defending his WPT title for $1.7 million at the Los Angeles Poker Classic.

Yesterday he won a nice consolation prize, taking over $900k off of Tom "Durrr" Dwan in a head's up cash game on Full Tilt. The players were playing in the Thurnderdome and Ivey only bought in once, while Durrr continued to rebuy and bust out. Ivey was also sitting with over $400k in the nine-handed PLO/NLHE mixed high stakes game on Full Tilt.

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.

Behind the scenes of High Stakes Poker w/Barry Greenstein

In Barry Greenstein's latest video blog he takes us behind the scenes of the famous poker show "High Stakes Poker," where he talks to David Benyamine about his big loss in the big game, discusses prop betting with Tom "Durrr" Dwan and listens to Doyle Brunson and Daniel Negreanu argue about who's right more often when they argue.

Link to the video footage here.

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.

Phil Ivey wins million dollar cash game

Poker's best player has done it again. Up against the best cash game players in the world, which included Hellmuth, Antonius, Hansen, Matusow, Durr, Townsend, etc., Phil Ivey won the million dollar cash game (Full Tilt sponsored) in London.

To my best knowledge, the way the game works is player buy in with their own money for either 100k or 200k, then whoever is up the most at the end of the two-day session also wins a trophy and a bonus cash prize. This is just info I've picked up from conversation.

Here's a link to the story on the Full Tilt blog.

"Million Dollar Cash Game" announced

Full Tilt Poker has announced it's lineup for this year's "Million Dollar Cash Game," which will take place on September 17 and 18 in London.

The lineup will consist of Phil Ivey, Chris Ferguson, Phil Hellmuth, Patrik Antonius, Gus Hansen, Mike Matusow, Erick Lindgren, Andy Bloch, Allen Cunningham, Eli Elezra, Tom Dwan, and Tony G.

Obviously some of these players are getting staked by someone. Each player has to buy in for approximately $180 grand.

via pokernews

Poker After Dark: 'Nets vs. Vets' Week

I have to admit I wish they had taken the live pros that are considered the best of the best these days (i.e. Phil Ivey, Patrik Antonius) but then it would have a different feel as they play each other online anyways.

This should be good viewing to at least see if the styles of play are vastly different between the online players and the live pros.

My money is on Huck Seed, then Johnny Chan.

The show airs at 2:05 a.m. on NBC during the weekdays and a recap on Saturday at night at 1:00 a.m.

You can also catch the previous day's episodes at here.

Here's the full story.