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In more than 2,000 hands played in the Tom “Durrrr” Dwan Million Dollar Challenge on October 27th and October 28th, Dwan earned $82,000, pushing his lead to nearly $780,000 overall after 27,185 hands.
Dwan raked in his earnings after besting rival Patrik Antonius’ 2s-As-Ah-9h with 10d-7h-Ad-Ac. Antonius was double-suited in the hand, giving him a slight edge pre-flop despite both players holding aces. Accordingly, Antonius raised to $1,200, Dwan made it $3,600, Antonius pushed the price of poker to $10,800, Dwan made it $32,400, Antonius bumped it to $97,200, and Dwan called all-in for his $94,000 stack. The board ran out 9s-5c-9c-6c-8h, giving Dwan the win in the hand with a ten-high straight. Normally, this hand would be chopped about 50% of the time. Nevertheless, Dwan scooped the $189,000 pot, setting him up for success during the session.
Antonius would fire back, holding Ad-8d-Kc-7c double-suited against Dwan’s 10h-7h-6d-10d, also double-suited. Antonius raised to $1,200 pre-flop and Dwan made it $3,600. Antonius then pushed the action to $6,000 and Dwan called. The flop came 4d-Ah-6h and the two got it all-in, with Dwan risking his entire $90,000 stack. The board ran out Ks-2s, giving Dwan a lowly pair of tens and Antonius aces-up. The pot was worth $180,000 and Antonius repossessed some of his lost earnings.
In a separate hand, Dwan flopped three sevens holding 7d-8d-7s-6s after the first three community cards came 7c-2s-4h. Antonius had Jh-Ac-7h-10s, giving him a pair, and he called Dwan’s $83,000 all-in after the turn fell a jack, improving him to two pair. The river was a queen, shipping the $192,000 pot to Dwan with trip sevens. Antonius later redeemed himself after turning a set of nines with hole cards of 9h-Jh-9d-Qs. The board came 10c-7h-Js-9s-3s and Dwan could only muster 10h-Kd-Ad-Ks for a pair of kings.
The final session consisted of 470 hands and concluded around 1:00am ET on October 28th. Dwan earned $167,000 during the mini-session and $82,000 over the previous eight hours overall. He owns a lead of $779,000 in the high-stakes Million Dollar Challenge, which began earlier this year. Scheduling conflicts and a rigorous live tournament schedule have prolonged the conclusion of the event for quite some time. After Antonius, high-stakes pros David Benyamine and 2009 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event November Nine member Phil Ivey are waiting in the wings for Dwan.
A total of 27,185 hands have been played out of the 50,000 required for completion of the challenge. If Dwan is up by at least $1 at its end, Antonius will owe him $500,000. Contrastingly, if Antonius is up by at least $1 at the end of the 50,000 hands, Dwan will turn over $1.5 million. In either case, the winner keeps the spoils of their play. The duo has been four-tabling $200/$400 Pot Limit Omaha on Full Tilt Poker, where Antonius is a sponsored pro.
October 27th featured the fifth largest pot over the course of the Durrrr Challenge at $293,000. Dwan scooped the behemoth and has laid claim to six of the seven largest pots during the 27,000 hand encounter. The largest pot in history occurred on June 19th and weighed in at $477,000. That day’s session, which occurred during the 2009 WSOP, featured the four largest Durrrr Challenge pots worth a combined $1.6 million; Dwan won all but one.
A live version of the Durrrr Challenge was scheduled to take place in London featuring Dwan battling against four players during the WSOP Europe festivities. Now, organizer Eddie Hearn told DurrrrChallenge.com that the stage may be moved to Las Vegas in early December. Rumors flew that Luke “Full_Flush” Schwartz would take on Dwan in the live event, but Sammy George has been the only competitor to sign on officially.
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A recent change to the tournament schedules at CEREUS Network sites Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet has online grinders rejoicing at the fact that it will now be even easier to bolt to the bathroom during a long session of online tournament play. The two rooms are the latest to adopt the practice of synchronizing breaks.
Like PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker before them, Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet’s five-minute breaks will run from 55 minutes past the hour to the top of the hour. This means that even if a tournament has not been running for an hour, players will still go on break at 55 after in order to stay synchronized with the rest of the schedule.
There are a few exceptions to the new synchronized break policy. For example, any tournament that is still in the late registration period will not go on break at the scheduled time. Regular tournaments that are still in the first blind level at 55 minutes past the hour will also skip the five minute break, as will Turbo and Ultra Turbo tournaments that are in the first two levels of play. Multi-table sit and gos will also not be taking part in synchronized breaks, but the official statement from CEREUS suggests that this exception may be a temporary one. If users are ever unsure about whether or not a tournament has synchronized breaks, they can check the lobby for verification.
Earlier this month, Team Ultimate Bet Pro Adam “Roothlus” Levy informed members of the online poker forum PocketFives.com that synchronized breaks were coming by November and also filled them in on some potential changes on the site. He said the room would be revamping its tournament schedule to cater to the needs of high-stakes multi-table tournament players, including moving up the popular $300 buy-in $100,000 Guaranteed deep stack tournament one hour from its current 5:30pm ET start.
There has yet to be any official statement from Ultimate Bet regarding changes to the tournament schedule, but a press release from CEREUS did announce that they have implemented a new “Raise To” button. Previously, players had to subtract the amount of the initial bets from their raise. The new “Raise To” button allows users to simply type in the amount they would like to raise to.
Full Tilt Poker first introduced synchronized breaks in April and PokerStars followed suit in August. While the concept has been a big hit among online tournament regulars who were previously unable to step away from their computers without inevitably missing hands, several players have noticed some timing issues that are cutting players’ breaks short. When PokerStars first started synchronizing breaks at 55 minutes past the hour, the tournaments on both Full Tilt and PokerStars would go on break at almost exactly the same time. Now, several players have noticed that there is almost one minute between the time in which PokerStars players are sent on break and when Full Tilt players are sent, cutting down noticeably on the time they can spend away from the virtual tables.
Despite the timing discrepancies, synchronized breaks have still been a big success overall and this recent step by CEREUS suggests that a five-minute break at the end of the hour is on its way to becoming an industry standard.
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Earlier this decade, when poker wasn’t the behemoth that it is today, a noted writer by the name of James McManus accepted a job from Harper’s Magazine to cover the 2000 World Series of Poker (WSOP).
Far from looking at it as simply a poker entity and observe the proceedings, McManus decided to dovetail his story of the tournament with the ongoing murder investigation of the late Ted Binion and chronicle his efforts to play. After using a satellite to gain entrance into the Main Event, McManus went on to finish fifth in the $10,000 tournament and chronicled the whole story in what has become one of the poker world’s seminal books in “Positively Fifth Street,” which was released in 2003.
Since then, however, McManus has limited his writing about poker to newspapers and magazines. His last non-fiction book, “Physical: An American Checkup” (2006), looked at the American health care system and pointed out its problems even prior to this year’s debate on the issue. Now, one of the most notable scribes in the business has returned with what might be called the definitive book on the history of the game.
“Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker” was released on October 27th and documents, as best as possible, the development, growth, and history of what once was considered to be America’s game and has since expanded around the world. From the beginning of the creation of playing cards in China and Korea to today’s game, McManus nails the goal of putting a history to a pastime.
“Poker has a long-deserved reputation as the cheaters’ game, but the book reminds us that cheating has been a big part of baseball, football, cycling, boxing, horseracing, marriage, taxes, politics, warfare, and most other human activities,” McManus stated before the interview with Poker News Daily began. “It’s naive to single out poker as being overly luck-based or larcenous, especially when making laws banning some games, while encouraging others. For the State to encourage lotteries and bingo while banning poker is greedy and cynical.”
McManus continued by discussing the theory that poker is luck-based and how his book handles that issue. “I think the book makes it fairly clear how much luck is involved in other games, such as baseball and football, games that few people think of as being determined by luck,” McManus said. “Luck determines the winner of baseball’s World Series about as much as it does the winner of the WSOP.”
PND: After the success of “Positively Fifth Street,” why didn’t you write another poker book immediately?
McManus: Because I was sent by a magazine to get an executive physical at the Mayo Clinic, by another magazine to cover the debate about stem-cell research, and by another to write about emergency surgery my daughter had undergone. It seemed only natural that I would combine this material into a book, which turned out to be “Physical: An American Checkup” (2006).
In the meantime, poker still had my interest. My agent, editor, and I were all surprised that there was no single book on the history of what is clearly America’s card game and arguably the national pastime, especially during the boom years this decade. As such, I continued to research the poker story and it became “Cowboys Full.”
PND: What were some of the problems in writing a book on a subject that doesn’t have a well-known and documented history?
McManus: One problem was that I had no training as an historian; it’s one reason I call it the story of poker, not the history.
Another was that people tend not to keep records of their poker action, especially when they work as blacklegs and swindlers. You’re forced to rely on lore, hearsay, and the work of feature writers such as Mark Twain, who were paid to exaggerate for humorous or dramatic effect. The book addresses this problem directly and makes a serious effort to deduce what was actually going on. The reporting becomes more precise and historically reliable as I cover the last third of the 20th century, especially when famous hands began to be televised.
PND: What was more difficult, the research for or the writing of “Cowboys Full”?
McManus: Most definitely the research. I have 35 years of experience as a writer, but very little as a researcher, although Google and the Amazon search function made the job a lot easier than if I had to do it with microfiche. I also couldn’t have done it without David Schwartz’s hospitality and sage advice at the UNLV Center for Gaming Research or without his marvelous history of gambling, “Roll the Bones.”
PND: You look at poker from sides that the average person wouldn’t consider. When you talked to academics and scientists about poker and its effects on human history, did they understand what you were doing?
McManus: In many cases, I was relying on what people had written. People like John von Neumann, Oskar Morgenstern, David Halberstam, and the presidents and generals in charge of World War II and the Cold War were already dead while I was writing.
At the same time, I interviewed plenty of folks including Todd Brunson, Barry Greenstein, Jennifer Harman, Linda Johnson, Andy Beal, Crandell Addington, Chris Ferguson, Aaron Brown, Tony Holden, and Gabe Kaplan, who understood some of these issues a lot better than I did before I started talking to them.
PND: What was the most surprising aspect of poker you learned from your research?
McManus: How important its logic and psychology was, and continues to be, to the military and diplomatic strategies deployed in a world in which several countries, including some extremely unstable regimes, have nuclear weapons. In other words, how important poker-based game theory is to life beyond the green felt.
PND: What can the reader take away from “Cowboys Full” other than a grasp of the history of the game?
McManus: That it isn’t just a history lesson. It has dozens of pretty cool stories about actual games: riverboat hustles, friendly games in the White House and the homes of ordinary citizens, $40 million showdowns between Andy Beal and the corporation of Las Vegas pros captained by Doyle Brunson, Jennifer Harman facing off against Andy while waiting for her second kidney transplant, Stu Ungar making a WSOP final table from the intensive care unit, and Chris Moneymaker’s bluff against Sammy Farha. They’re all there and more.
PND: Now that you have followed up “Fifth Street,” are you finished writing books about poker?
McManus: No, but almost. I’m currently writing the final book of the trilogy. Book one was a memoir about the WSOP, which became “Positively Fifth Street.” Book two is the history of poker, which is “Cowboys Full.” Book three is a novel tentatively titled “The Winter Casino” about a very large tournament played in a city being threatened by an Al-Qaeda cell with a nuclear suitcase device.
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The schedule for Season 3 of the Latin American Poker Tour (LAPT) was announced this week and headlining the list was the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, formerly a staple of the European Poker Tour (EPT).
The 2009 installment of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure drew 1,347 players to the Atlantis Resort and Casino in the Bahamas. The $10,000 buy-in Main Event saw a whopping 1,061 entrants, or nearly 80% of the field, qualify through PokerStars, which sponsors both the LAPT and EPT as the world’s largest online poker room. In the end, Canadian poker player Poorya Nazari defeated Tony Gregg after just four hands of heads-up play. In the final pot, Nazari’s A-10 withstood Gregg’s Q-7 to take down the title of Champion of the 2009 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure.
From January 4th to 14th, the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure will make its return to Nassau. The Main Event’s buy-in will once again be $10,300 and the tournament will assuredly break every record that the LAPT has to offer. Last season’s total prize pool on the LAPT circuit was just over $4 million and 1,053 players took to the felts in events held in San Jose (Costa Rica), Viña del Mar (Chile), Punta del Este (Uruguay), and Mar del Plata (Argentina).
The third season of the LAPT will begin on November 19th at the Playa Conchal in Costa Rica. The $2,700 buy-in tournament marks the second time that the LAPT has visited the pristine area of Costa Rica and will call the Paradisius Playa Conchal Resort home. The tournament is capped at 350 players and will crown a champion on November 22nd. Text found on the LAPT’s website candidly explains why the country has become such a popular tourist destination: “One of the reasons Costa Rica has become one of the world’s premiere vacation destinations and a favorite place to purchase a second home is the spectacular climate.” Other than the rainy season, it boasts beautiful weather.
The PokerStars Caribbean Adventure is the second stop on the third season of the LAPT. Originally a stop on the World Poker Tour (WPT), the tournament moved to the EPT in 2008. It was the lone stop in the Western Hemisphere for the EPT circuit and boasted one of the largest live event fields outside of the United States. The 2010 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure is capped at 1,600 runners.
The LAPT heads to Punta del Este on February 24th for a tournament that will name a winner three days later. Its buy-in is $3,700 and last year, the event was the largest on the LAPT circuit at 327 players and had a seven-figure prize pool. Norwegian student Karl Hevroy took down the most recent running of the LAPT Punta del Este for $283,000. The event has a cap of 350 entrants.
From March 19th to 23rd, the LAPT will invade Viña del Mar, Chile. The Enjoy Viña del Mar Casino and Resort will serve as the tournament’s host venue. Players will pony up $2,700 to enter and, last time out, Argentinean poker player Fabian Ortiz won the event in style after being down to less than one-half of a big blind when play was four-handed. Nevertheless, he battled back in one of the most impressive comebacks in the history of poker.
The final stop of Season 3 of the LAPT is Argentina, which will take place at a yet-to-be-determine site and date. The $5,300 buy-in marks the conclusion of the following schedule:
November 19 – 22, 2009
LAPT Playa Conchal, Costa Rica
$2,500 + $200 buy-in
January 4 – 14, 2010
PokerStars Caribbean Adventure
$10,000 +$300 buy-in
February 24 – 27, 2010
LAPT Punta del Este, Uruguay
$3,500 + $200 buy-in
March 19 – 23, 2010
LAPT Viña del Mar, Chile
$2,500 + $200 buy-in
To Be Determined
LAPT Argentina Grand Final
$5,000 + $300 buy-in
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Acabo de completar "Qual clipe você seria?" e meu resultado foi: Poker Face! Experimente: http://bit.ly/3jcpXm
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BWOTEOW: 10/31/09 | Pokerati | Texas Hold'em and Las Vegas Poker Blog: New Yorker Tommy Vedes has been on a.. http://bit.ly/1eqmie
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@foldinglaundry Yes! I was telling @babysteph that the girls should come over next time Shane has poker night. I'd have him make us dinner.
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Happy Halloween everybody…Just woke up, was playing poker all night. No plans for tonight… that usually means-POKER 
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I wonder if my winning streak would continue if I sneak out to a poker game tonight…
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RT @tymoss: Eric Cartman singing Poker Face – http://bit.ly/2WDNHE beat that stupid family guy clips!
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