Durrrr Challenge Remastered: Another Fail?

The clock is ticking...but who’s counting down?

Three months have passed since Daniel ‘jungleman’ Cates resuscitated the famous $1,000,000 Durrrr Challenge and we've still heard nothing from Dwan. On July 27, 2015, Cates posted on 2+2 forums the following message:

There are still some odd six months left and nobody has seen ‘jungleman’ and ‘durrrr’ at the poker tables... At least on the virtual felt where everyone can track the results. What’s more interesting is that Cates - who has continuously complained about Tom Dwan’s lack of commitment on the forums to the point that he threatened to reveal some aspects of Tom’s ‘not so ordinary’ personal life - hasn’t mentioned a single thing about the challenge since then.

Two years ago, ‘jungleman’ made a similar announcement about the challenge that started in 2010, prior to Black Friday. They agreed back then to play a minimum of 4,000 hands in August 2013 and another 8,000 hands every two months. Of course that didn’t happen so Cates called ‘foul’ and forced Dwan’s hand by making him pay $40,000 for every two months without progress. We still don’t know if Dwan paid a penny in penalties or if he’s ever going to.

So is this the sign of another failure? And how about details about the remastered edition of the Durrrr Challenge? Where will the two play out the last 25,000 heads-up hands?

Full Tilt Out, PokerStars Maybe and How About Macau?

One thing is for sure: ‘jungleman’ and ‘durrrr’ won’t play the rest of the challenge on Full Tilt. Full Tilt doesn’t have the nosebleeds tables anymore removing them last summer as part of their rebranding. The Heads-Up cash tables were also removed.

And that leaves them with the most popular option out there: PokerStars. PS has games running up to $200/$400. The highest Heads-up stake is $50/$100, clearly a downgrade since pre-Black Friday, the highest action one could see was $300/$600 and even $500/$1,000 NLHE. Yet there is no doubt PS will eventually raise up the stakes if those two decide to resume their challenge on their platform (for obvious marketing and income reasons).

But what if Cates and Dwan decided to resume their match on the live green felt? Since both of them are often seen playing the highest stakes on the planet in Macau, wouldn’t that be a real possibility? Indeed it would but until ‘jungleman’ gives us a full update, we can only speculate.

Durrrr Challenge History Lesson

The $1,000,000 Durrrr Challenge started in 2010 when Tom Dwan was crushing online. Confident of his NLHE skills, Dwan challenged anyone to try and beat him heads-up over the course of 50,000 hands while offering an outrageous 3-to-1 odds. Rising HU cash player back then ‘jungleman’ accepted the challenge and put $500,000 on the line. So if Dwan turned a profit after 50,000 hands, he would receive $500,000; if Cates was the winner, he would earn $1,500,000 (3-to-1 odds) plus of course the profit.

The two played over 20,000 hands (Cates up $1.2M+ in profits by the way) until Black Friday happened freezing both Dwan and Cates’ Full Tilt bankrolls. In spite of getting their money back in 2012, after FT’s re-opening, the two didn’t play many hands online as part of the challenge (under 3K) with Cates constantly threatening Dwan on the forums and in the media.

Will we ever see the Durrrr Challenge completed?