It’s been a long time since we had anything to report on the Durrrr Challenge – entirely too long! Needless to say, we here at the official fan site of the Durrrr Challenge could not be more ecstatic to report that poker pro Daniel Cates has called out the elusive Tom Dwan in an effort to rekindle the multi-million dollar contest on Full Tilt Poker.
For those of you who have forgotten exactly what the Durrrr Challenge is all about – which is likely a lot of you considering how excruciatingly long the hiatus has been – here’s a little reminder on the rules and minutiae of the competition.
The Durrrr Challenge Timeline
It all began in 2009 when Tom Dwan could no longer find anyone (except Phil “OMGClayAikin” Galfond) who would dare play him at high-stakes heads-up tables on Full Tilt Poker. The rules were simple…
-Play 50,000 hands at minimum $200/$400 stakes on 4+ simultaneous tables.
-Challenger chooses the game; NL Holdem or PL Omaha.
-Anyone but Phil Galfond is eligible.
After the required 50,000 hands, if Tom Dwan leads by a single $1 or more, the challenger pays Tom $500k, on top whatever else he’s already won from them. If the challenger wins by $1 or more, however, the challenger keeps all the money they’ve already won, and receives a whopping $1.5 million from Mr. Dwan.
Where the Durrrr Challenge Sits Now
At the moment, Tom Dwan has two unfinished challenges; one with his first opponent, the Finnish poker pro Patrik Antonius, and one with American poker pro Daniel “jungleman12” Cates.
Tom “durrrr” Dwan won’t likely be finishing things out with Patrik anytime soon as the Finn has already moved on, signing a new sponsorship deal with iGame Poker in July of 2012. As such, the challenge has been deemed “inactive”. As for Daniel Cates, however, the prospects remain wide open.
The Dwan/Cates battle began in August of 2010. When Full Tilt Poker was officially shut down by the US Department of Justice in 2011, Dwan and Cates left off their Durrrr Challenge with Daniel leading by $1,251,059.00. They had played through 19,335 hands, leaving an extensive bout of 30,665 hands to go.
In early March, Daniel Cates posed a blistering question on his Twitter account, “junglemandan”, aimed at Tom “durrrr” Dwan, that read:
@TomDwan, would you like to continue our challenge instead of playing everybody else at every game on @FullTiltPoker?
Dwan responded to the direct, if not flagrant, query:
“Hey @junglemandan, sure. Also care to pay me our figure finally since I guess now we’re tweeting dick things we could text.?”
This sparked a brief back-and-forth exchange between the two regarding some mysterious and supposed debt that Cates may or may not owe Dwan before the two agreed to continue their conversation in private, via text messages – much to the disappointment of the general republic, I’m sure.
Shortly thereafter, Cates was highlighted in an interview with HighStakesDB.com, in which he confirmed that the Durrrr Challenge will, in fact, continue in the near future. According to Cates, both Dwan and himself need a few weeks to deposit additional funds into their Full Tilt Poker accounts before they are prepared to continue the nose-bleed stakes of the Durrrr Challenge.
