Nose Bleed Report: Durrrr Surges in 16-Hour Session

Sometimes, events get billed as the greatest show on Earth-no disrespect to legendary showman and circus owner P.T. Barnum-but those lofty events often fail to live up to the hype and expectations. When the "durrrr Challenge" was announced in January, many folks in poker, myself included, thought that those heads-up matches between Tom "durrrr" Dwan and his challengers would become the greatest invention in the world since sliced bread. However, after several months of sporadic play, the "durrrr Challenge" was not as sexy as everyone thought, that was, until one night in the middle of June.

They were only supposed to play for a brief amount of time, but a short session quickly turned into a marathon heads-up battle between Patrik Antonius and Tom "durrrr" Dwan. The two regulars in the nose bleed stakes played almost 16 hours in total and when the dust settled, durrrr walked away the winner in the most talked about session since the inception of the "durrrr Challenge." That was the type of session that poker fans expected to see during the initial stages of the challenge.

Inside of a three hour period on June 19, Antonius and durrrr were involved in three pots worth over $400,000 each over at Full Tilt Poker. Antonius and durrrr played $200-$400 pot-limit Omaha as a part of the "durrrr Challenge" that many insiders and fans thought would become a casualty during the hectic World Series of Poker. Those lucky few who were on the rail during the heads-up match caught a remarkable session where more than $5 million was put into play over a span of 4,500 hands.

Out of the ten largest pots played between the two pros, nine of them occurred on the June 19 session. Durrrr got the better of Antonius and booked a win worth $764,000. At the same time, durrrr maintained an overall advantage of $726,500 through 30 sessions. At this juncture, they have completed approximately 20,500 hands but are less than half way through the 50,000 hand challenge. They have bet through almost a staggering $160 million since the outset.

Although durrrr dominated Antonius for most of the June 19 session, Antonius won the largest pot worth over $477,555. Antonius opened with a raise to $1,200. Durrrr made it $3,600 to go in the big blind. Antonius bumped it back up to $6,000. Durrrr potted to $18,000 and Antonius called. The flop was Qs-6s-6d. Durrrr checked. Antonius bet $16,400. Durrrr check-raised to $47,100 and Antonius called. The turn was the 9h. Durrrr fired out $54,600 and Antonius shoved all in for $173,600. Durrrr had him covered and called. Durrrr held a full house with 9c-8d-7d-6c for sixes full of nines, while Antonius was way ahead with Kc-Qh-Qd-9d. The Finnish pro flopped a full house with queens full and it held up. Unfortunately, that would be the only significant pot that he'd win the entire session.

Durrrr collected pots worth $408,394, $376,790, and $353,759 en route to his thumping of Antonius. Alas, the wunderkind legend of durrrr grows. During his marathon session against Antonius, durrrr played a series of heads-up matches against Gus Hansen, Phil Ivey, and young Russian Alexander Kostritsyn. Ivey took on durrrr during the dinner break of one of his WSOP events. Ivey had been running hot at the 2009 WSOP and collected two bracelets, and there were rumors that he won $14 million in various bracelet prop bets. Over at the virtual tables, Ivey's streak continued as he won over $816,000 online at Full Tilt since the beginning of June.

Since the WSOP kicked off, the big online winners included durrrr (+$1.1 million) and luckexpress10 (+$898,000), while the big losers in June included Gus Hansen (-$1.1 million), Bomberman (-$988,503), and LarsLuzak (-$501,000).

Paul 'Dr. Pauly' McGuire is the author of the upcoming book 'Lost Vegas'. You can read his poker blog, Tao of Poker, over at www.taopoker.com.