Posts Tagged ‘tom dwan’
Daniel Cates Tops Online Poker Winners in 2010
December 28th, 2010
It’s been a very good year for jungleman12.
If things continue the way they have for the last 12 months, Daniel “jungleman12” Cates will be the top winner in online poker for 2010.
Cates has really made a name for himself this year, winning more than $4.9 million this year playing both no-limit hold’em and pot-limit Omaha. at stakes as high as $500/$1,000. Just two years removed from the $.25/$.50 heads-up tables where he got his start, he has consistently held his own against top-class competition at the high-stakes online poker tables throughout 2010. Included in his win total for the year is a $500,000 win against Tom Dwan over the course of the first 14,000 or so hands of their Durrrr Challenge. Perhaps most impressively of all, Cates has enjoyed all this success while continuing his studies in economics at American University.
Behind jungleman12 on the list of top winners in online poker for the year is Norwegian pot-limit Omaha specialist Andreas Torbergsen, known online as “skjervoy.” He has won $3.7 million in 2010, just ahead of Dwan ($3.6 million) and Phil Ivey ($3 million). With a few more days left on the calendar there’s still time for things to change, but as it stands right now it’s been an impressive year for Daniel Cates and his high-stakes competition.
Tom Dwan Gains Ground in Durrrr Challenge 2
December 8th, 2010
Two days in a row against jungleman12? What are the odds of that?
Tom Dwan’s original Durrrr Challenge with Patrik Antonius has been filed under “Missing In Action” for some time now, having been dormant since a brief session in August. Poker fans might have thought the second installment against with Daniel “jungleman12” Cates was going the same way, but Dwan has hit the tables with Cates two days in a row now to continue grinding toward the mythical 50,000-hand mark that will signal the end of the challenge.
The action started on Tuesday with a 346-hand session that saw a $110,000 win for jungleman12, thanks in large part to two hands where he hit the nut flush. The session, which lasted just 45 minutes, saw Cates extend his lead over Dwan to $755,000 despite the fact that the two had played just over 20 percent of the total hands required. Wednesday’s action in the challenge, broken up into two smaller sessions, was a fair bit longer at 1,440 hands. In the first one Dwan booked a $195,000 win against Cates, while the latter struck back in the second session for a much smaller $23,000 win. That left Dwan with a $172,000 profit for the day but still behind overall by nearly $583,000.
High stakes poker fans will surely be hoping for the two to log more Durrrr Challenge sessions in the upcoming weeks, but if past experience is anything to go by you’d be more likely to enter rehab for an eggnog addiction than to see Tom Dwan logging serious hours against Daniel Cates over the holidays.
Casino Billionaire Spends $330,000 on Two Truffles
November 29th, 2010
What three hundred grand worth of fungus looks like. (photo courtesy of AP)
So what do billionaire casino moguls in Macau do for fun, when they’re not hosting mutli-million dollar cash poker games with Tom Dwan and Phil Ivey? Apparently they spend $330,000 on fungus.
Billionaire Stanley Ho, who made much of his fortune owning hotels and casinos in Macau, came in with the winning bid for two prize white truffles at a charity auction held at his own Grand Lisboa hotel. Both the delicacies are enormous, by truffle standards, with the larger weighing in at nearly two pounds, and the other tipping the scale at just under a pound.
The auction featured sixteen different lots of white truffles and raised almost $400,000 for a variety of charities. White truffles from Italy, the kind Ho bought, are prized for their flavor and aroma. Dogs or pigs are used to sniff them out from where they grow under trees. The two that commanded the most in auction were both found in Italy, one in the central Tuscany region and the other in Molise.
This wasn’t the first time Ho has laid down hundreds of thousands of dollars in pursuit of the giant fungi. Three years ago he paid the same price for a single enormous truffle.
Big Omaha Cash Game Action in Marrakech
November 22nd, 2010
Casino de Marrakech offers some of the world’s biggest Omaha action.
It looks like the historically huge cash games in Macau are done for a while as Phil Ivey and Tom Dwan head back to the United States for business, giving their Chinese hosts a break for a bit. That doesn’t mean the international cash game action is finished, though. This week the World Poker Tour is heading to Casino de Marrakech in Morocco, where the pot-limit Omaha cash games are some of the biggest in the world.
Cash games in Marrakech are played in the local currency, the Moroccan Dirham, which converts to the US dollar at a rate of about 8 to 1. That means that the highest-stakes Omaha game offered, with 2000dh/4000dh blinds, is played with blinds of $250/$500. The blinds are bigger than those in the $200/$400 Omaha games played online by the likes of Phil Ivey, Tom Dwan and Phil Galfond. Even the middle blind levels on offer like 1,000dh/2,000dh ($125/$250) and 500dh/1,000dh ($62.50/$125) compare well with some of the bigger live Omaha cash games in the United States.
Even more attractive to international high-stakes than just the money on the table is the fact that Morocco’s Omaha cash games have a reputation for being extremely juicy. The locals love to gamble it up, so anyone looking for an Omaha action fix will want to hop a flight to Marrakech ASAP. There’s also the value of playing against those same super-loose local players in the €5,000 WPT main event, which starts November 27. Of course, with the pot-limit Omaha games so juicy, you might find yourself trying to bust out of the tournament durrrr-style just so you can get back to the cash game action. If that happens, don’t say we didn’t warn you.
Tom Dwan Playing High Stakes Poker in Macau
November 15th, 2010
Who has time for online poker when there are Chinese businessmen to play against?
If you’ve been waiting for Tom Dwan and Daniel Cates to get back to their Durrrr Challenge, you could end up waiting a long time for satisfaction now that Dwan has discovered the nosebleed-stakes cash games on the Chinese island of Macau.
Dwan was in town for the Asian Poker Tour event held at the City of Dreams casino, but a semi-private cash game populated by Chinese businessmen who enjoy taking on the world’s best poker players turned out to be the real draw for the young poker pro. Along with Phil Ivey, Chau Giang and John Juanda, Dwan sat in a no-limit hold’em game that internationally famed tournament director Matt Savage described in a 2+2 thread as “some of the biggest in history.” The game started with blinds of 5,000/10,000 Hong Kong Dollars (roughly $650/$1,300 in US dollars) before the American pros convinced their hosts to bump the blinds up to 10,000/20,000 HKD (roughly $1,300/$2,600 USD).
Savage posted a few short updates on the game, which started at the Hard Rock Hotel before moving to Starworld Casino. Then he sent a link to the thread to Tom Hall, the CEO of gambling industry business AsianLogic and an occasional player in the game himself. Hall, who personally invited Ivey and Dwan to Macau to play in the game, then began posting more details in the 2+2 thread.
“These ‘businessmen’ are generally involved in the gaming industry in some form, casino junkets, sports betting etc and instead of losing tens of millions playing baccarat every year discovered poker 2 years ago and have taken to it. Some have become very, very good. Obviously not to the level of Ivey and Tom, but can hold their own and they are fearless which makes them dangerous,” wrote Hall. “They like action and thats why people like Tom Dwan they find very fun to play against. The length of the sessions are also legendary with 20-30 hour sessions with a 6 hour break and then being repeated 4-5 times relatively common. Bluffing is highly respected (but don’t get caught – its expensive)!!”
Details on the actual gameplay from the weekend are a bit sparse, as you might expect, but it appears that Dwan started off down before winning a huge pot with A-K against Q-Q and T-T to find himself up $1.7 million USD early yesterday morning. Savage said at that point that Ivey was “back to even,” though Hall wrote late on Sunday night that Ivey was “apparently up large now.” He also wrote that Ted Forrest had turned up and that there two games are now running, one with 10,000/20,000 HKD blinds and another with 5,000/10,000 HKD blinds.
You can keep up with the latest news at the 2+2 High Stakes Poker in Macau thread.
Tom Dwan Sorry for Durrrr Challenge Delays
November 10th, 2010
Tom Dwan: too busy hat shopping to play the durrrr Challenge? (photo courtesy of PocketFives.com)
Lost in all the hoopla surrounding the WSOP main event final table is the complete suckiness of the Durrrr Challenge. Remember that? Tom Dwan, who we all thought was one of the most exciting young players to ever happen to the game, was supposed to be taking on the best and brightest of the poker world in a heads-up high-stakes challenge with millions of dollars on the line. But, as we’re seeing now, this thing should probably be re-named the Nevurrrr-ending Challenge.
For those of you who were smart enough to never follow this thing in the first place, the rules are this: 50,000 hands of heads-up NLHE or PLO poker, with the winner getting an additional $500,000 (if it’s Dwan) or $1 million (if it’s the other guy). So far, two players have taken the challenge, Patrik Antonius and Daniel “Jungleman12″ Cates. The Dwan/Antonius battle started back in 1972 or thereabouts, and still isn’t done. The Dwan/Jungleman12 match got underway in August of this year. They started strong, but things have completely shut down of late, with the most recent action coming back on October 5th.
But in a recent blog post, Dwan apologized for the lack of any progress, and promised to get things back underway soon. He says: “I have two challenges open, both of which haven’t had much play in the last few weeks. I was busy with WSOPE then traveling a bunch – but in the next few days/weeks I should be putting in a ton of hands with “jungleman12″.” On the Antonius challenge, he goes on to say: “I don’t know if we’ll be finishing soon, but hopefully we will, and sorry to the people watching the challenge that it’s gone on so long.”
GSN Announces Seventh Season of High Stakes Poker
October 25th, 2010
The most popular poker program on TV returns for another season.
GSN announced recently that it has ordered another season of High Stakes Poker. The show, which features the biggest names in poker duking it out with a minimum buy-in of $200,000, is the highest-rated program on the cable network, which is otherwise known for reruns of 1970s game shows like Match Game and Family Feud and keeping the career of Chuck Woolery alive with new shows like Lingo.
The network has confirmed that Gabe Kaplan will return as the show’s host for the seventh season. Also returning is Kara Scott, who joined the show last season and replaced former co-host AJ Benza. Scott’s segments received mixed reviews from the poker community last year, so hopefully the show’s producers will find a better way to use the beautiful and intelligent Scott instead of wasting her on silly interview segments.
Filming for the new season of High Stakes Poker will take place from November 18-20 this year, which is about the same time that the sixth season was filmed. The lineup has yet to be confirmed, though it’s hard to imagine the show taping a single minute without confirming that Phil Ivey, Tom Dwan and Patrik Antonius will be in the mix. Other regulars like Eli Elezra, Daniel Negreanu, Barry Greenstein and high-stakes punching bag Phil Hellmuth are also likely to return.
There are no details yet on when the new season of High Stakes Poker will air, but if GSN holds to last year’s schedule we just might get our first peek at the new action in February 2011.
Tom Dwan Beats Daniel Cates in Short Durrrr Challenge Session
October 8th, 2010
Durrrr knows this challenge is a marathon, not a sprint.
With all the big London tournament action that held up the challenge finally out of the way, Tom “durrrr” Dwan and Daniel “jungleman12″ Cates have managed to put in two sessions of their 50,000-hand competition this week. The first saw the two essentially break even after 582 hands – Dwan actually grabbed a small win, but it was worth just a few big blinds. The second, another short session, came just a few days ago and saw Dwan narrow Cates’ margin a bit.
The two sat down for 258 hands of $100/$200 no-limit hold’em on Tuesday night and while there weren’t any six-figure pots, there was plenty of action. Dwan grabbed the night’s biggest pot, a $90,395 affair where he called a preflop three-bet and a flop lead holding suited rags and then proceeded to go runner-runner for a flush and get Cates to call all-in. At the end of the session Dwan had eked out a win of nearly $32,000, marking his second winner in a row against jungleman12.
Tom Dwan and Daniel Cates have now played 7,660 hands of heads-up poker. That’s just over 15 percent of the 50,000 hands required to complete this installment of the Durrrr Challenge, so there’s still lots of action remaining. Anything could still happen with so far left to go, but for the time being the young upstart can enjoy his advantage, both in terms of number of hands won (4,691 to Dwan’s 2,926) and profit ($657,774).
Tom Dwan Beats Everyone, Wins $1.5 Million
October 5th, 2010
Can anyone stop poker’s baby-faced assassin?
It’s good to be Tom Dwan. Sure, maybe it doesn’t always go your way. You might play at a few live tournaments, lose a couple bracelet bets, and drop some obscene amount of money. But then you sit down for one night of online poker, and win $1.5 million dollars off some of the best players in the game.
And that’s just what happened on Sunday night for the young phenom (are we still calling him a phenom?). Dwan sat down with Finnish pro Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies for just 800 or so hands of $500/$1,000 Pot Limit Omaha. By the time they’d played 500 of those hands, everything was dead even. But in the last 300 hands, Dwan took control of the game, and ended up beating the Finn for $1.2 million. The biggest pot of the night went to Dwan, whose straight on the turn beat Ziigmund’s two pair, for $416,000.
But Tom didn’t stop there. He played another 2,500 hands of No Limit Hold’Em and H.O.R.S.E. against a variety of opponents, taking them for a collective $300,000 over the course of the evening.
He and Daniel “Jungleman12″ Cates also managed to get in a few hands of durrrr Challenge action, with 582 hands played. The action there was pretty much a draw though, with Dwan ending the session up by just over a grand.
Big Online Poker Weekend For Daniel “Jungleman12″ Cates
October 4th, 2010
Better run through the jungle, don’t look back to see.
While the tournament poker world had its eyes on the final few days of EPT London, online poker player Daniel Cates was putting in more hands than any of those players in the casino would see in an entire tournament. Not only that, but he was doing it against two very high-profile opponents.
On Saturday Cates was waiting for the next installment of his Durrrr Challenge matchup with Tom Dwan when he got the opportunity to sit down with a player who has caused him problems in the past: Isildur1. The psuedonymous Swede had emptied Daniel Cates’ entire bankroll back in December of last year playing $100/$200 no-limit hold’em, but that didn’t stop jungleman12 from firing up the heads-up tables and playing a few thousand hands against the player who had depleted him once before. The match was a see-saw affair, with both players alternately grabbing the lead. Isildur1 was up as much as $55,000 at one point, but Cates managed to pull out a $97,000 win by the time they finished the 2,123-hand session.
Once jungleman12 was finished with Isildur1, he moved on to the session he had planned in the first place: the Durrrr Challenge. The matchup wasn’t quite as epic as his battle with the Swede – it lasted just 582 hands and saw Dwan eke out a $1,492.50 profit before calling it quits for the night. Durrrr still faces a deficit of $689,000 in the Challenge with jungleman12. The two have 42,600 hands remaining, meaning that it’s anyone’s game – but Daniel Cates has to be feeling pretty good about his big online poker weekend right about now.
