Earlier this year Tom “durrrr” Dwan issued an open challenge to all poker players: to play him heads up at Pot Limit Omaha on 4 simultaneous tables, for 50,000 hands, to be played at Full Tilt Poker. The buy in for this was set at half a million dollars. At the end of this epic game, whichever player was up, by even a cent, would take the $1,000,000 pot.
To add incentive to this, and to underscore his confidence, Dwan added a million of his own money as a side bet on the game – if he is defeated, the winner will get his extra million. It was an enticing prospect, but it took a while for players to start responding. Eventually they did, and the first to step up to the plate was Patrik Antonius.
The game hasn’t been running as smoothly as you might expect. Both Dwan and Antonius make their income from nosebleed stakes poker at Full Tilt’s most elite tables, and so their attention tends to drift when big fish are about. The end result is that although the challenge is more than half complete, we haven’t seen action on it in weeks.
But all that changed last night when the two locked horns again for the first time in almost six weeks. It was a cracking session that took them more than 500 hands towards their target, with some spectacular play on both sides. Overall, Antonius managed to take back almost $70,000 from Dwan, reducing his lead to a little over $700,000. We’ll keep you updated as the challenge progresses and more on real money poker sites.
