By Kory Travers | November 21, 2009

Though Tom “durrrr” Dwan may be down a couple of million to “Isildur1” on the Full Tilt Poker high stakes cash game tables this month, he did manage to turn a tidy profit in the live and televised version of his online poker challenge. While the online durrrr Challenge, in which durrrr takes on an opponent on four $200/$400 tables for 50,000 hands of poker, has been an all-around let down, the live durrrr Challenge not only saw itself to completion, it offered a lot of drama in the process.

The brainchild of Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Sport, the brick and mortar event was filmed and will air on Europe’s Sky Sports channel in 2010. The event saw Dwan take on three different pros in heads-up matches with the blinds at $500/$1,000. Players were not allowed to walk away from the table until they either went broke or played a requisite 500 hands of poker. Dwan’s first two opponents, Marcello “luckexpress” Marigliano and Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies, opted to challenge the 23 year-old in both Pot Limit Omaha and No Limit Hold’em, while his third opponent, Sammy “Any Two” George, opted for just No Limit Hold’em.

There was room in the event for a fourth contender and Dwan issued a public invitation to his newest online nemesis, Isildur1. The mysterious Swedish player has won around $3 million off of durrrr online just this month, but did not respond to the invite, more than likely because he is trying to keep his identity under wraps a little longer.

While Isildur1 failed to make the trip to London, Marigliano, Sahamies and George did, but only one of them walked away in the black. Marigliano was the first player to take on durrrr and he made the most of it, booking a relatively small profit of $22,500 after being up as much as $200,000 and down over $100,000 for part of the match. As the Matchroom Sport recap noted, though Dwan won more pots than Marigliano, the bigger hands went the Italian’s way to give him the victory.

Round Two against Sahamies would end in a modest victory for Dwan, who netted $68,000 after a 12-hour long battle with his Finnish friend. Not only was the match long on its own, but Dwan had played a lengthy session on Full Tilt the night before and was visibly sleep deprived as he took on Ziigmund.

The final match of the Challenge was reserved for the first player to step up and accept the challenge, Sammy George. George is no stranger to televised cash games, with past appearances on PokerHeaven Cash Game and the Party Poker Poker Den. George was also tapped to take part in the most recent season of “High Stakes Poker”, which filmed in Las Vegas earlier this month. Despite all that televised poker experience, the match with durrrr did not go his way and George booked the biggest loss of any of the players involved, dropping $750,000. Had George been able to pick off a big bluff from Dwan, he could have ended up in the black. Dwan moved all-in on a board of A-J-6-3-3 with a heart flush possibility. George held A-6 for aces up, but threw his hand away, fearing a better two pair, trips, a flush or even a full house. Dwan showed 7-2 for total air and scooped the massive pot.

All told, durrrr came out nearly $800,000 ahead and reminded the poker world why his online Challenge was considered to be so daunting in the first place.

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