The Durrrr Challenge has been silent for a month now, but that doesn’t mean our two favorite competitors, Tom “durrrr” Dwan and Dan “jungleman12” Cates, have been completely absent from the virtual felts. In fact, the latter just dropped $51,000 to PokerStars pro Viktor “Isildur1” Blom in the third installment of the SuperStar Showdown.
The PokerStars SuperStar Showdown spans 2,500 hands and, in the case of Cates and Blom, took place on four $50/$100 No Limit Hold’em tables on PokerStars. It was a railbird’s dream of sorts and the action took place last Sunday. The match lasted about four hours and in many ways paralleled the Durrrr Challenge on Full Tilt Poker; the goal was to profit as much money as possible off your opponent in the time allotted.
One of the largest pots of the session capped out at $54,400. In it, Cates and Blom saw a flop of 5-3-4 with two spades and built a purse of over $20,000. The turn was the seven of diamonds and Blom shoved all-in for $15,000. Cates made the quick call and showed 8-7 for top pair, while Blom tabled 5-4 for fives-up. The river was an unfortunate cooler for Blom, as an eight hit to give Cates the massive pot with a better two pair.
Despite the loss, Blom still came out ahead in the match and booked $51,000 in profit, improving his SuperStar Showdown record to 2-1. Blom dropped his first ever Showdown match to Isaac Haxton before rebounding in recent weeks against PartyPoker front man Tony G.
On the $51,000 loss by Cates, text on the PokerStars Blog joked, “While a loss of that magnitude is enough to leave many of us mere mortals searching for a suicide hotline, for this duo, it’s just another day at the office.”
The next SuperStar Showdown has not yet been announced, but the promotion has been taking place about once every three to four weeks. At the end of the Cates/Blom confrontation, Team PokerStars Pro member Daniel Negreanu appeared to be interested, typing in the chat box, “Good game guys… Well done Isildur… E-mail me later… I have some questions about the rules.” In a recent blog on Full Contact Poker, Negreanu revealed that he’s been practicing multi-tabling for a possible SuperStar Showdown appearance.
Cates didn’t seem to be too bothered by the loss of an average annual salary at the hands of Blom, Tweeting, “Lost ~50 vs Isildur1, could have played better and had some better cards… gg.”
Dwan, meanwhile, was in Singapore, Tweeting to his followers, “Otw to Singapore, Singapore Air seems pretty sick so far. Takeoff in 20 min or so, trip reports to follow.” Upon arrival, he commented, “Just landed in Singapore. Sick nice airport, pretty excited to see the city, but only have 12 hrs.”
Dwan and Cates are about one-third of the way through the Durrrr Challenge on Full Tilt. The latter is up $819,000 after 17,000 hands of the 50,000 required for completion, but there has been no play since January 4th. The first Durrrr Challenge between Dwan and Patrik Antonius has not seen any action in the last six months.
