Remember how awesome SNL and the Onion were when they finally re-emerged after September 11th? Kinda the same thing, but with less death to navigate in the punchlines. Possibly the best episode yet, imho. (And a reminder for all that while we may take our poker seriously, we prolly shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously unless you want to end up like Durrrr and his flamingo.)
I won’t even list the humorous nuggets embedded in the Chase vs. ROFLs matchup … just watch and occasionally press pause when you see small print for refreshingly funny stuff.
Another good interview from the WPT-London Poker Classic, which seems to be going on for about as long as the Durrrr Challenge. Wha? Nevermind, it’s the PartyPoker World Poker Open … more poker in the same London Palm Beach Casino … but technically a different event.
Anyhow, London-London-London … that’s the hottest spot in the poker world this month. And everyone loves Durrrr (many in a strangely homosexual way according to YouTube comments) … and forget the Patrik Antoniuses and Gus Hansens … now Jungleman seems to be the only non-Ivey nosebleed opponent that matters.
The durrrr challenge with Jungleman ran its second session late Monday morning into the afternoon, playing a shade under 1000 hands this time around. Jungleman (Daniel Cates) continued to hold the advantage, and even when losing big pots he was always able to bounce back within minutes. Durrrr, on the other hand, was found felted on two tables and playing shortstacked poker, despite a rule in the challenge requiring a reload at 75bbs. Jungleman ended up winning $172k in session #2, all NLHE, to bring his total to +$692k after 6820 hands, according to FTP’s Poker on the Rail blog. Not bad (so far) for a 20-year-old college student making the 24-year-old Team Full Tilt pro look something like an old man.
JungleMan’s blog on CardRunners here. Good interview with Daniel Cates here.
For those who like to railbird the high stakes action online, especially at Full Tilt Poker, Tom “Durrrr” Dwan’s open challenge seemed like a match made in heaven. 50,000 hands of 200/400 NL holdem or PLO action over at least 4 tables, with Dwan offering his opponent an additional $1,500,000 if they were ahead with the opponent paying Dwan $500,000 if he came out on top. The first player to accept the challenge was Patrik Antonius in February 2009. However, other cash game action slowed down the action creating gaps of several months where no hands were played. 18 months later, Dwan is up over $2,000,000 on Antonius with about 10,000 hands left in their challenge.
Enter Daniel “Jungleman12” Cates, an instructor at CardRunners who went from .25/.50 NL HU to playing in the biggest cash games online in just two years. After Cates accepted the challenge on July 19th, the forums went wild, longing for the days when Isildur1 was crushing the cash game superstars. It took over a month, but after an interview with AlCantHang on FullTiltPoker’s Poker from the Rail blog, the challenge finally got underway early Friday morning. The first session had Dwan ahead by over $161,000 after nearly 1,600 hands were played. A second session started a few hours later, with Cates holding over Dwan over the next 3500 hands, finishing with a profit of over $500,000. The chart of the early action appears below, and you can follow the action on FTP’s Durrrr Challenge 2 page.
Supposedly the big news on the Tom Dwan vs. The World front is that Jungleman — my personal heads-up coach thanks to free poker training with CardRunners — will be Durrrr’s next opponent in the super-big-stakes Durrrr Challenge.
While I personally think these are relevant matches in the legislative and regulatory realm — where else can you see that much money transacted, repeatedly, potentially across international borders, without Uncle Sam having his finger in the pot other than maybe Mafia Wars or real-money cocaine deals? — Wicked Chops has what could be the single best post ever about the significance of Tom Dwan’s ongoing namesake poker invitational.
