Hiatus seems to be the name of the game in the Durrrr Challenge between Daniel Cates and Tom Dwan. First, a 2 year hiatus during which time Full Tilt Poker was shut down, then a 3 week break between the action after finally resuming in mid-April. This latest session saw Dwan chipping away at Cates’ lead with another $92k chunk coming his way.
The entire weekend was rather exciting as far as Tom Dwan was concerned. He started off with a session that earned him $300k at his usual nosebleed stakes on Full Tilt Poker, and that was before he and Daniel “Jungleman12” Cates got back to the challenge at hand. Once they got back into it, they ran through a lengthy session that saw about 900 hands played across four simultaneous tables, as per the rules of the Durrrr Challenge.
There weren’t any exceptionally pricey hands this time around, but it’s clear that durrrr is getting back on his game. In their first meeting after the re-launch of Full Tilt Poker, back on April 14th – a very short session that saw Dwan and Cates tossing chips for just under an hour in what many railbirds called little more than a tease – Dwan took several large pots to swipe a massive $158k off of jungleman12’s extensive $1.1 million lead. Over the weekend, Dwan managed to sever another $92k off of his lofty deficit.
With more than 29,000 hands left to be played before we see a definitive end to this battle, there is plenty of time for durrrr to complete the come back and best his latest opponent. On the other hand, when Cates is lit up, he can do some incredible damage.
For the moment, we can only hope the lulls in meetings become shorter from here on out. At the current rate, it could take nearly two more years to see this thing through to the end (averaging 900 hands per 3 week period comes to about 100 weeks). I’m fairly certain no one – not Tom Dwan, or Daniel Cates, nor any of us fascinated railbirds – would care to see the challenge drug out that long.
