If you have not lived under a rock somewhere on an island you should have heard of the Durrrr challenge. This challenge was one of the most famous and most talked off poker coup of the last year. What could be pictured as the perfect marketing deal for Full Tilt poker ultimately never fulfilled its potential and even damaged the reputation of one of the most famous online poker players, Tom Dwan.
At the time when online poker was at his ultimate high, Tom Dwan was the role model for every newcomer out there and one of the most popular advertisers for online poker.
This was the time when Full Tilt was still up and running and one of the big global players in online poker. These global players pushed poker into the mainstream with clever advertising, televised high stakes cash games and success stories of young rookies who made it. Even in the main stream print media of the time you could find frequent articles about the success and lifestyle of these new celebrities. It was the golden era of online poker, the fishes had fun and the sharks were growing fat on easy bait and it was this environment that would create one of the most controversial poker challenges ever openly announced.
Tom Dwan, who dropped out of Boston university to pursue his poker career, had started with just a 50$ bankroll but moved up the rankings quickly.
Because of his loose aggressive playstyle his bankroll suffered massive swings which always were subject to controversial discussions not only by the professionals. Did he really make one million$ in just one day playing heads up PLO? Did he really lose a third of his four-million bankroll in 2007? It is well documented that in 2009 he lost about 7 Million Dollar to Phil Ivey, Ilari Sahamies and Victor Blom, causing rumors of his bankruptcy to quickly emerge. But Dwan recovered from this downswing and more than made up his losses just to suffer another massive downswing. But Dwan always seemed to get back up and come out with even more money than he had lost, it was the ultimate poker rookie success story. He got beaten, sometimes with nearly career-ending losses, but somehow found a game where he won massive amounts of cash in very short time.
So the beatings the average fish suffered at the micro and small stakes games did not seem to be that bad anymore. After all, if Tom Dwan can suffer such swings, surely the few buy-ins the fish just lost on the table were just a minor setback in the plan on becoming rich.
These massive swings were one of the reasons Dwan was so popular at the time. There was always a good story to be told about him and the media watched closely, ready to jump in if the online poker phenom made another spectacular move.
Dwan was known to play high stakes PLO and Hold’em on multiple sites talking about his exploits and adventurers frequently and openly. The big poker sites loved him for this, as he was the ultimate role model for every high school student who dreamed to make it in poker, for every hard working man who hoped to make some big and easy money and every other non-professional poker player at the time.
He was the guy who woke up one morning and made millions online the other day. If he could make it, you could make it too. Of course it was not even close to the truth but this was the story that sold and that brought even more Adventurers to the tables.
Dwan told stories how he won a million dollars playing PLO heads up on multiple sites simultaneously which for the time was unheard of. He even admitted that his edge over those players was not as high as he would have liked it to be, but that he was getting rather lucky a few times.
This created an even bigger surge of interest in Dwan, because luck was not a special talent or some skill acquired with hard work, luck was something everyone could enjoy right here and now.
On the other hand, Dwan was already considered one of the best PLO and Hold’em Heads-Up players in the world when he announced his now infamous “Durrrr Challenge” in 2009. The poker landscape at this time and date was not as hard as today and the reputation of Dwan has suffered a bit in the last years, but no one would deny that “Durrrr” is still at the top of those PLO heads up players.
In 2009, he had the reputation as one of the best PLOHE and NLHE players in the world and in January 2009 Dwan announced to play anyone online heads up, except of Phil Galfond and that he would enhance this challenge with an additional side bet worth as much as $1.500.000.
Dwan and his opponent would have to play 50,000 hands four-tabling at $200/$400 limits or higher in No-Limit hold ’em or Pot-Limit Omaha.
If after the 50.000 hands his opponent is ahead, Dwan would pay him an additional $1.500.000. If on the other hand Dwan is ahead, his opponent would give him an additional $500.000.
Sadly, there was no time limit set to when the 50.000 hands would need to be completed. This little detail would become very controversial just a few months later.
Nonetheless, with this kind of odds, any numbers of professional heads up players were lining up to play Tom Dwan. The first ones to accept the challenge were Patrick Antonius, David Benyamine and Phil Ivey. From these three, Antonius was the one who actually played the first “Durrrr challenge”.
The Finnish professional poker player agreed to play heads up PLO with Dwan which might have been a mistake, as Dwan is known to be a better PLO player than NLHE . The challenge progressed over the next year and was getting a lot of media attention resulting in Tom Dwan becoming a member of Team Fulltilt in November 2009.
In this part of the challenge, Dwan was firmly in control and after 39,436 hands of the 50.000 hands to be played he was up by 2,059,719.50$. The action died down gradually and it was later announced that both players had settled the challenge privately, most likely with Antonius paying most of the 500,000$ bet to Dwan on exchange for an early end of the challenge.
But 2009 was not all luck and profit for Tom Dwan as there were rumors that he had lost some serious cash in NLHE games against players like Luke “Fullflush1″ Schwartz and, much more prominent, against Isildur1. His reputation as an expert NLHE player was questioned at this time, but Dwan made up his losses just a year later, winning over $9m between December 2009 and April 2010. Dwan made most of it in high variance PLO matches against players like Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies or Gus Hansen.
Being firmly on top of his game, Dwan accepted the challenge of Daniel “Jungleman12” Cates in 2010 as the second part of the “Durrrr” challenge.
This time though, Tom Dwan had his hands full with his opponent. Cates decided to play NLHE against Dwan and it quickly became apparent that Cates had a considerable edge over his opponent.
The more Dwan lost in this part of the challenge the more difficult it became for Cates to get a hold on Dwan to continue playing. Dwan was clearly stalling the challenge which might have something to do with him and Full Tilt parting ways in 2012. It is rumored that his Sponsor would pay up a considerable chunk of the 1,500.000$ owed if Dwan loses his challenge, so Dwan had even more reason to abort his challenge. But although he was considered as outspoken and fairly straightforward by players and fans alike, Dwan never announced the end of the challenge, causing a lot of turmoil of the years.
Now, eight years later, the challenge against Cates is still not completed and has even been called “one of the biggest scams in poker” by professional Heads Up player Dough Polk.
On the other hand Daniel Cates himself always stood behind Tom Dwan and proclaimed on multiple occasions that the challenge will be completed at some point.
tom and I have been talking about this and working on a resolution. We should get some hands this year
— Daniel Cates (@junglemandan) January 15, 2017
Cates also explained that Dwan had some “problems” he needed to sort out and that he paid as much as 800.000$ as a fine for not being able to play the challenge.
Why Tom Dwan is paying as much money as this and still does not buy himself out of the challenge as Patrick Antonius did remains a mystery. But it’s no secret that Tom Dwan’s reputation has severely suffered from avoiding the challenge against Jungleman, so if he has the money, why not end it and salvage some of his reputation?
This question fired up some more rumors about Dwan being broke but just as the last couple of times the news of Tom Dwan’s bankruptcy seem to be greatly exaggerated
Jungleman outclassed Dwan in their clash but both players seem to be at ease with each other. Jungleman is up 1,251,059.00$ after just 19,335 hands and has Dwan basically drawing dead but yet both players cherish the idea of completing the challenge somewhere in the near future.
It might even work out as another massive media hype if they could agree on finishing the challenge in one or two big sessions, as the interest in this challenge is unabated big, even 8 years after it initially started.
If this challenge would get televised or streamed with a commentator it surely would generate interest way beyond the poker community just as the live version of the Durrrr Challenge in 2009 did
But as it stands the Durrrr Challenge is just another exiting event that never quite fulfilled its potential. But there was a live version of the challenge shortly after Tom Dwan was enlisted by FullTilt Poker and this challenge on the other hand did deliver what was promised!
