It seems as if the Durrrr Challenge is finally starting to move as Dwan and Cates put in more time for their sessions. Just recently, the two of them logged exactly 1,214 hands. It was a short session, all told, but Dwan managed to gain $63,000. It seems as if he’s slowly but surely closing the gap between him and Cates. Cates’ lead, on the other hand, was lessened to $500,000 – still pretty considerable, but only a few pots away if they continue to have such huge raising contests like they always do.

Monster Pots

Dwan and Cates seem to be really serious about finishing this challenge – a refreshing change from the ‘all but dead’ challenge of Antonius and Dwan. They’re still sticking to the shorter sessions, probably by Dwan’s choice, as it seems that Cates is perfectly willing to spend as much time as possible on the challenge. Still, though the sessions are short, they’re still pretty full of excitement, courtesy of the monster pots that Dwan and Cates can create. They’re not as big as the ones made last 2009 with Dwan, Ivey, Antonius, and Isildur1, but they’re big enough. The largest pot was worth $210,000, which was shipped to Cates when Dwan’s hand fell short.

At one point in the session, Dwan even managed to close the gap to only $200,000, but Cates fought back. The second largest pot amounted to $189,000. This time, it was Dwan who managed to secure the monster pot, Cates having mucked his hand. All in all, this session had three pots that amounted to more than $150,000. It was a monster of a session, but even though Dwan managed to get himself a pretty considerable win, he was still pretty frustrated. Apparently, Dwan’s internet connection flickered and died during the game, while he was in the middle of a hand that could have won him more than $30,000.

Of course, Dwan was pretty pissed and he let his frustrations out on Twitter. Justified, of course. I’d be pretty frustrated too if I was in his place.

An Update

So far, Dwan and Cates have finished 14,190 hands out of the 50,000. They haven’t quite reached the halfway point there, but if they keep playing like this, they’ll reach that point in no time. They’ve had fourteen sessions in all but most of them were short sessions, so their pace isn’t really as fast as most would like. Cates now has a lead of $500,000. He nearly had a $700,000 lead before, but Dwan is slowly sloughing the chips off from Cates’ stack.