Antonius Way Ahead in the Durrrr Challenge

Back in February, Patrik Antonius' challenge match with Durrrr began in earnest as the two players struggled at times to find the time to sit down and grapple with each other.  When the two finally played, the matchups were generally tight with neither player able to gain much of an advantage over the other. Durrrr enjoyed an early lead of about $125K but my, how times have changed.

After battling it out on four heads up tables yesterday on Full Tilt Poker, Antonius has surged ahead and has taken a commanding lead, with just about $500,000 in profits. Though the match still has a ways to go, it seems that Durrrr is going to need to become even more aggressive as he tries to chip away at the huge deficit he now faces.

During his illustrious online career, Durrrr has never had this type of adversity so it bears watching to see if he tightens his style up in order to induce more Antonius' mistakes or if he will take his aggression to another level in the hopes of getting back some kind of edge.  In any case, should Antonius decide to tighten things up on his end, he could try to play a form of keep-away and force Durrrr out of his comfort zone and slowly but surely run out the clock.  In last night's session alone, which consisted of 290 total hands, Antonius got the better of just about every large pot and finished up $328,000. This is by far the largest deficit either player has faced during this round of the million dollar challenge.  When all was said and done, Durrrr got the worst of it in the 4 largest pots between the two, losing pots of $174K, $151K, $153K and $161K.

Though Phil Ivey and David Benyamine are waiting in the wings to take on Durrrr as well, it does not seem as likely that Durrrr will take on another challenge if he continues to lose to Antonius at such an alarming rate and then has to pony up $1.5 million to boot.

If the match were called today, Durrrr would lose $2million and although he has been a big winner at these stakes for a long time, there is only so much damage any one person's bankroll can take.        

source: www.aintluck.com