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Much has been written about Tom "Durrrr" Dwan's million dollar challenge in which he is laying 3 to 1 odds to any opponent who agrees to engage him in a 50,000 hand heads up battle multi-tabling of high stakes $200/$400 Pot Limit Omaha. A king's ransom would be paid to his opponent should he be defeated.
Since being the first to accept the challenge in Mid-January, Patrik Antonius biggest obstacle has been to find a time in which both players can sit down and actually play. To date, the two have played for a total of 38 hours and have played approximately 12,000 hands, meaning they are just about a quarter of the way done. At present pace, this challenge could very well extend into the summer months, leaving Phil Ivey, David Benyamine and anyone else looking to get in on the action waiting on the sidelines until their virtual name is called.
Now for the first time, Antonius is speaking publicly about the match, of which he states that he is currently up about $80,000. Initially, Antonius felt the he would be a big underdog against Durrrr as he noted that multi tabling heads up is not very well-versed in as he ordinarily played full ring or 6-max games. As expected, Durrrr did jump out to a quick and early lead on Antonius but as time has passed, his comfort level has increased and his results are a direct reflection of this as he first even things out and then surged into the lead.
These days, Antonius is confident enough to state that he feels Durrrr's initial edge has been minimized and that he has a good chance to beat him. However, he does note that he expects the final result to be close and that he expects it to come down to the final few hundred hands. He also believes that no one is going to lose what they think is a significant amount of money during the sessions.
Scheduling problems have been an ongoing issue for the two opponents and as the World Series of Poker approaches, it is not expected to be alleviated anytime soon as they have agreed to not play during the series itself as there are so many other games going on at the time. When asked if their strategies would change should someone have a big lead, he said that he expected the pots to get smaller as the leader tries to run out the proverbial clock. In any case, he doesn't believe that will be the case as so far, neither player has finished a session up more than $150,000 on the other. In any case, the challenge is expected to last until the early fall 2009.
Source: www.aintpoker.com
