While Tom Dwan and Daniel “jungleman12″ Cates have been increasingly busy with other endeavors, this past Friday the two online poker prodigies put aside a significant amount of time to play each other in their 50,000-hand challenge. The pair managed to put in 2,123 hands of play, in multiple sessions, with Dwan ending up ahead nearly $13K.
The first session, which saw jungleman12 control much of the action, allowed Cates to pick up a small lead on Dwan to the tune of $35K. Despite being up over $200,000 on Dwan at one point, the pair continued to battle on through 1,354 hands, which allowed Dwan to make most of his money back before taking a break. Nevertheless in the second session, which clocked in at 769 hands, Dwan made his intentions evident with a gutsy comeback, and also accumulated an extra $12,000+ along the way. Despite his efforts only showing marginally in terms of his overall deficit, we can be certain Dwan was more than happy to escape the last hour-long session with a small profit.
Now that 9,783 hands have been played in the challenge, the level of play between both multi-tablers has picked up considerably. Despite both having tons of experience playing several tables at a time, adjusting to each other’s strategies and gameplans has certainly been something they’ve had to adjust to. Interestingly enough, despite Dwan issuing the challenge initially, it’s Cates who ultimately believes he has the strong advantage in terms of skill, and being able to adjust to his opponents. Cates mentioned in one of his latest interviews, that he truly “can’t see what Dwan could throw at him that he wouldn’t be able to adjust to.”
Cates has played extremely well against Dwan in the past, and according to Poker Table Ratings, has gathered over $1 million dollars from the newest Team Full Tilt member in various cash game settings. So understandably, it came as a huge surprise to have Dwan issue the challenge so vehemently. In an interview with Poker Static radio show, just a few months back, Cates even mentioned that he truly doesn’t believe there’s many people in the world that can beat him online. In regards to heads-up No-Limit Hold’Em play specifically, Cates commented, “if they’re not using a HUD, it’s nearly impossible. There’s just certain small changes that you can pick up on, that you might not be able to otherwise.”
Cates’ strong sense of confidence has certainly showed throughout the challenge, and he’s jumped out to a $645,667 lead against Dwan because of it. In comparison, Cates’ assumptions are so-far proving to be accurate, at least through 10,000 hands.
While Dwan gained some of his confidence back by squeezing out a tiny win against Cates, it might behoove Dwan to improve his winning percentage against his adversary. Cates has been winning approximately 60% of the hands dealt, and although Dwan has one more of the larger pots, over time it may be difficult to overcome that glaring statistic. In the biggest pot of Friday’s session, Dwan certainly raised the eyebrows of his opponent and railbirds alike when he called a four-bet out of position with 6-3 off-suit against jungleman12′s pocket kings. After the harmless-looking flop of 3-6-6 fell, it was only natural to expect all of the money to go in by the river. The pot, which totaled $128K, was then shipped to Dwan after he flopped a full house, and was one of the biggest pots between both sessions.
Now that Dwan is finished traveling to Macau and Cates is done traveling between several gorgeous U.S. cities, both players are much more grounded and we should see the pace of the Durrrr Challenge pick up considerably. Unfortunately the two players never really discuss much information about when the next session will begin, so we’ll just have to make sure to watch the Durrrr Challenge tables on Full Tilt Poker for more action between the two players. Hopefully in the future, it won’t be necessary to wait a dreadful two months.
As always, High Stakes Report will be here will all of the latest updates from the contest.
