Patrick Antonius Now Ahead of Durrrr

If you’ve read this blog in past weeks, you know I’m following the Durrrr Challenge. The Durrrr challenge is essentially the invitation by online star Tom Dwan (screen name Durrrr) that he’ll lay anyone in the world 3-1 if they are a dollar ahead of him after 50,000 hands. His first taker is pro Patrick Antonius and after an early pounding by Durrrr, Antonius is now up $107k on him. I think the brash online star is going to have to take out his checkbook when this is all said and done. Notice the italics on win.

I really like the idea of playing a lot of hands to take the “luck” out of the game, but these guys are only on 5,500 of 50,000 after 17 hours of play. Wouldn’t 20 to 25,000 hands suffice? These guys are blowing through the game at roughly 323.5 hands (or 5.4 hands a minute) and still are no where close to done. At this rate, they’ll need to play heads up for 153 hours which comes to 6 days and change of playing 5.4 hands per minute.

Forget the skill, after that long I’d kill over for lack of interest. I think Durrrr would beat me in the Durrrr challenge just because I need more diversity in my brain than playing one opponent in online heads up for 6 days. While it may be true that statistically the luck factor has been virtually diminished, the players’ skill level will also go down. After that many hands – over that period of time – you just aren’t going to play as sharp. I doubt final table players at the WSOP even log 10,000 hands over the course of their run. Hopefully Dwan lowers the hands played number for his next matches.

I hadn’t seen this video before. Here is Dwan talking about the upcoming battles in his challenge. He actually sounds a lot more humbled than I’ve ever heard him. He even admits Atonius, Ivey, and Benyamine are all better overall players than he is.