Online Poker

The first round of the 'durrrr' challenge at Full Tilt Poker should (finally) be coming to a close in the near future. Tom 'durrrr' Dwan and Patrik Antonius have now played almost 33,000 of their 50,000 challenge hands. However, a recent session of just 79 hands and the fact that Dwan is leading by $1,414,551 leads me to wonder whether we'll be waiting a full year or more until the two pros see this through.

Now, with more than 17,000 hands to go, Antonius could still make his money back. He has made a full recovery from a situation almost as dire before, and it only took him about 4,000 hands to pull that off. However, it is looking more and more like durrrr has Antonius' number, and I'm not sure that there's hope of recovery. Antonius' rallies just aren't winning him enough back, and it's looking pretty disastrous for him at the moment.

If Antonius just manages to keep his losses at their current level for the next 17,000 hands, he still could lose near $2 million overall once he pays the additional $500,000 for losing the challenge. I suspect that, at best, he'll be able to bring his losses back down to beneath 500K, but even then he'll lose close to $1 million. With all this in mind, and all the stats clearly pointing to continued durrrr dominance, what will keep Antonius coming back to the tables? I'm beginning to think that a short time limit should have been imposed on the challenge, and I hope that Dwan insists on one with his next opponent if he actually decides to continue with another challenge.

What do you think about the pace of the 'durrrr' challenge? Do you agree with me, that it desperately needs a time limit as well as its hand limit? Please tell us all about it in the comments.

-Shad