PokerWorks

Tom “durrrr” Dwan was sure he would find at least one player to accept his high stakes online poker challenge, and he ended up with several, Patrik Antonius and Phil Ivey among them. And in just over one month, the matches have begun on Full Tilt Poker.

The challenge was one that would involve pot-limit Omaha and/or no-limit hold’em played at the $200/$400 level or higher on an online poker site with four tables playing at the same time. After 50,000 hands that would take place over the course of a reasonable period of time, if Dwan’s challenger was up as little as $1 after the rake, Dwan would pay that person $1.5 million, though if the tables were turned and he was the overall winner, he would only take $500,000. The stipulations were that all stacks must be at least 75 big blinds at all times, stakes remain the same during all 50,000 hands, and tables can be changed when one person accumulates a stack of more than 250 big blinds.

While Phil Ivey and Patrick Antonius accepted the challenge independently, and David Benyamine acknowledged some interest in furthering a discussion, it was Antonius who was first to go forth to make it happen with Dwan. Full Tilt Poker stepped up and prepared special tables to accommodate the two players and the countless railbirds who would likely line up to watch.

The delay in the start of the matches was due to logistics on the part of Antonius, who had been in Thailand on holiday with his family, but the shoddy internet connection made for less than ideal online poker conditions. Nevertheless, the challenge began prior to Antonius’ return home to Monaco.

The first PLO session got underway on Wednesday, February 18, just after 6:30pm ET, and Antonius took the reigns and an early lead of more than $100K after the first 500 hands. Dwan, however, came back and took that same lead of $100K over his opponent before ending the match. Much of that came in one specific hand, wherein Dwan took a $114K pot with a flush on the river.

All in all, there were 1,541 hands played, which is just over 3% of the total hands agreed upon in the terms of the challenge, though either player can end the challenge by paying off an undisclosed side bet. The two claim to want to play on, though, as it seems to be only the beginning. With Dwan finishing just less than $135K up for the session, he and Antonius have yet to determine the next time they will compete.

Prior to the first match, Antonius told PokerNews that he is taking the challenge very seriously. “It’s very important for me to do well in this challenge so I will be taking my time, I don’t really care what the media thinks about how long it should take… We will play at the durrrr challenge tables when there is no good action anywhere else.”

With that, all eyes are on the special Full Tilt Poker tables (in the Omaha cash game section) set aside for the two high rollers at their convenience. They have been letting some of the media know when the action is preparing to start, and the poker community is certainly ready to watch it play out.