Online Action Update and Beal’s Latest Battle

With all this week’s talk about legalizing online poker in America, it seems as if many have forgotten that online poker is already alive and doing well with or without Reid’s bill. In fact, as if to underline that point U.S. pro Tom Dwan and his most recent Durrrr Challenge opponent Daniel “jungleman12” Cates were back at it again on Full Tilt Wednesday night.

This latest Durrrr Challenge session was one of the longest, with the pair adding an additional 1400 hands to their total tally, putting them approximately 11,000 hands into the 50,000-hand war. While Dwan’s latest challenger has certainly been putting the young pro through his paces, this last battle saw Dwan regaining some much-needed ground. By the time the two had called it a day, Dwan was $180,000 up for the session, reducing Cates’ overall lead significantly to less than $600,000.

PokerStars was also giving its spectators something to talk about this week with their new Team PokerStars pro, the legendary Isildur1, creating a stir Wednesday through Friday with his signature roller coaster runs. Isildur1 started his PokerStars residency off with a bang with a 14-hour session that started Wednesday and ran into the wee hours of Thursday morning. For his trouble, Isildur1 pocketed an impressive $287,500.

Apparently that quarter million-plus wasn’t enough, though, as Isildur1 returned to the room to multi-table four mid-stakes PLO Omaha games on Friday. A few hours in, and Isildur1 had already lost the previous day’s earnings, largely to fellow PokerStars pro Phil Galfond, who shares his graph of the epic face-off here. Knowing Isildur1’s reputation for giving and taking pain, we wouldn’t be surprised if he’s back at the tables for more yet again this weekend.

In a totally different realm of poker-related news, billionaire and sometime poker player Andy Beal – who is history in our industry for his multimillion dollar 2006 sessions with the Corporation – appears to have come up against a foe even more formidable than the young Phil Ivey. Beal is on the precipice of divorce, and the soon-to-be ex-Mrs. Beal is reportedly asking for up to $15 billion in “exemplary damages.”

 It’s an ironic personal turn for Beal, whose strategy when playing the Corporation was to take the stakes level so high that it would make his opponents uncomfortable. It looks like Simona Beal’s using a similar strategy.

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