The durrr challenge - why Jungleman is probably favourite

Poker News / Marcus Bateman / 03 September 2010 / Leave a Comment

Tom 'durrr' Dwan has started off a whole new challenge, this time against online no limit Hold'em phenomenon, Daniel 'Jungleman' Cates. Although Dwan is no doubt one of the very top poker players in the world right now, in this bet Cates may well be a marginal favourite, simply because of how the games have changed over the last year and what Dwan has been playing.

For the past year or so, very few high stakes Hold'em games have been running online. Those that have tended to be at much lower stakes than the other games available at the current nosebleed player's game of choice - Pot Limit Omaha. As a result, Dwan and the other nosebleed players have been focussing mainly on PLO.

In fact, the only very high stake Hold'em game that has really run in the last year has been the infamous Dwan vs 'Isildur1' match, one that resulted in a huge loss for Dwan - hardly the best confidence booster going into a new Hold'em match.

Not only this, but Daniel Cates may not have been putting in a lot of hours at the very highest stakes, but he has certainly been putting in a lot of hours in at the levels just below and profiting. With the out flux of the majority of the fish into PLO and other games, the player standard he has been up against is arguably a vastly harder one than existed at the higher stakes last year - even if the stakes have been slightly lower.

This dual combination of being slightly out of sorts at Hold'em himself, and being up against arguably the sharpest heads up Hold'em player in the world right now, may well be a very dangerous combination in a bet where Dwan is offering such attractive odds. Only time will tell if Dwan can start to pull back on Cates and get his game at its best again, but it certainly seems that barring any major break downs, in the historical content this match seems to favour Cates. Watch this space.

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