At this pace, Tom "durrrr" Dwan will lose nearly $3.5 million in this challenge.
Of course, it is still early. Even though the online pro is down nearly $500,000, the deficit is far from insurmountable with so much poker left to be played. The two competitors have played just 13,246 hands of the 50,000-hand challenge. However, Dwan will have to rebound and turn things around if he doesn’t want to pay another $1.5 million to his challenger, Patrik Antonius.
Antonius had a monster session last night, extending his lead by taking an additional $328,000 off the young pro in less than an hour over 290 hands. The Finnish pro has now made $488,133 off of Dwan in the challenge.
The two high-stakes pros had traded relatively modest leads up until last night’s session. But Antonius’ strong showing finally gave some visible credence to Phil Ivey’s ominous warning that “somebody’s probably going to go broke” in this challenge.
While the half-million-dollar deficit may seem like a devastating amount to the recreational player, it won’t be all that difficult for Dwan to make up if he puts together a few strong sessions.
The two players regularly buy in for at least $40,000 or more at each of their four tables, and the biggest pots of the challenge have exceeded $200,000. Dwan won a $291,950 pot on April 6 for the largest hand so far, while Antonius collected $228,932 from a single hand on April 9.
Dwan first announced his challenge to Card Player magazine in December for its January cover issue. He decided to lay 3-1 odds to anyone who wanted to take him on at 50,000 hands of either no-limit hold’em or pot-limit Omaha over four simultaneous online tables. If he won, he would win an extra $500,000 on top of his winnings. If his opponent won, he would shell out an additional $1.5 million.
Antonius and Ivey quickly accepted, and David Benyamine also showed considerable interest. Before his first match with Antonius, Dwan said that he would probably play a second opponent, depending on how the first match goes.
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