Even if you are playing a solid game, you can lose money playing online poker. Some of the biggest names in poker have losing nights, weeks or even months. Tom “Durrrr” Dwan is one of the biggest names in online poker and has become one of the biggest names on the live tournament circuit as well. In 2009 he issued a million dollar challenge. The challenge was first accepted by Patrick Antonius, a seasoned tournament pro.
The details of the challenge are important. They play heads up on 4 online tables simultaneously with blinds at $200 – $400. They play a total of 50,000 hands and whoever is ahead at the end is declared the winner. Whatever money is won, the winner keeps. They also get payed an additional amount by the loser. If Patrick wins, Tom Dwan will pay him $1.5 million. If Tom wins, he receives $500,000 from Patrick.
To date they have played almost 40,000 of the required 50,000 hands. The last time they played was August 3, 2010. Patrick has lost a little more than $2 million to Tom Dwan. Of course it isn’t over yet, there are still 10,000 hands to play but, it doesn’t look good for Patrick. He still has to pony up another half million if he can’t turn it all around in the last 10,000 hands.
But Patrick isn’t the only one to pick up the gauntlet Tom Dwan has thrown down, Dan “jungleman12” Cates has also accepted the challenge. Dan is also and online specialist and in this match, Tom is the big loser so far. But they are not even half way through the match, as of January 2, 2011 they had played a little over 17,000 hands. Right now Dan has more than $800,000 that used to be in Tom’s account. If Tom is down even $1 at the end of 50,000 hands, he has to fork over $1.5 million to Dan.