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It was announced a while ago that the next official challenger to Tom Dwan screen name durrrr in the Tom Dwan Million Dollar Challenge would be Dan Cates screen name JungleMan12. After a bit of speculation and hype by poker sites all over the world, the official start to the 2nd installment of the Million Dollar Challenge began early Friday morning on Full Tilt Poker.

As most everyone knows already, in order to take part in the Million Dollar Challenge, someone must put up $500,000 as a prop bet and then play durrrr in 50,000 hands of heads-up poker. Players must play four heads-up session at a time and must risk their own money. At the start of the session, a player must pick either PL Omaha or NL Holdem as their game, and that is the game that will take place throughout the challenge. At the end of 50,000 hands, if Dwan is ahead, he takes the players $500,000 in addition to the money won during the challenge. If the challenger wins, not only do they get the money won while playing, but they receive $500,000 from Dwan, plus an additional $1 Million bonus.

In this edition of the Million Dollar Challenge, the game of choice is No Limit Holdem. As you may recall, Patrik Antonius chose PL Omaha. Phil Ivey is the holder of the $500,000 from each player. Also, there are a couple of rules added onto this challenge. First, players need to add on if their stack is below 75 big blinds and can get up anytime effective stacks are greater than 250 big blinds. Also, all-ins will be ran twice in order to cut down on variance. In addition, the players agreed that they can play as many as six tables at once.

The first session between these two players began at 12:35 a.m. EDT Friday Morning and the first session between the two lasted about 2 and a half hours. At the end of the session, the players logged in 1,651 hands and Dwan emerged ahead $129,888. A two hour break then ensued and Dwan returned around 5:15 a.m. to start session two.

The second session lasted around seven hours and during that time Cates went on a massive heater. He rebounded from his $129k loss to pull even before going ahead about $150,000. Then, during the last hour of play, he ran a massive heater to pull ahead a total of $518,191 after 5,829 total hands played.

After one night, Dwan and Cates have over 11% of the challenge completed. It took Dwan and Antonius over a month to pull this off in their challenge. At the rate this challenge is going, we might be done by September. We had no clue when Antonius will finish his challenge.

Many give Cates a big advantage over Dwan in this one. According to PokerTableRatings, Dwan has lost more than $1.4 Million lifetime to Cates going into this challenge. So far, Cates has continued to dominate Dwan. Can he continue his domination? Stay tuned as we bring you more from the Million Dollar Challenge.

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Months ago, Tom Dwan screen name durrrr issued a massive challenge to anyone online willing to play him heads up at $200/$400 either Pot Limit Omaha or No Limit Hold’Em if they agreed to play on four tables or more. 50,000 hands had to be played and Dwan would put up $1.5 million against an opponents $500,000 on who would end the competition winning more money. Patrik Antonius accepted, however the game has yet to be finished with only 20,700 hands beings finished to this point. While Dwan is up over $2,000,000 in that match, the internet world exploded when the challenge got revisited recently. Daniel Cates screen name Jungleman12 accepted the same challenge, this time playing No Limit Hold’Em. We caught a glimpse of some early play in the challenge in this session. The first big hand saw Dwan winning a big pot for over $40,000.

Cates got quick revenge here. After Dwan made a 3/4 pot bet on the river, Cates moved all in, forcing Dwan to lay his hand down.

Dwan took down this next big pot with a bet on the river.

This next hand was the most interesting of the day. After a three bet preflop, Dwan led out the flop, only to be raised by Cates. After Dwan used part of his time bank, he put in a sizable three bet, putting the pressure back on his opponent. Cates went into the tank himself before making a four bet to send the railbirds buzzing. Dwan folded, and gave the big pot up to ‘Jungleman23.’

The biggest pot we saw so far took place here. The two got it all in on the turn, with Dwan dead to a heart. He missed on both runs, giving the $145,000 pot to Cates.

Cates continued his good run with a lead bet on this river.

Dwan, getting short on a table, fought back by four bet shoving this pot preflop.

A massive over ebt by Cates won him this pot of over $30,000.

Tom Dwan got some back in this hand with a bet on the river.

Two pair was good enough for Cates to win this pot from Dwan.

On the day, Daniel ‘Jungleman23′ Cates took a lead on Dwan in the challenge, to the tune of over $100,000.

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Perica Bukara came out victorious in the $25,000 High Roller Freeze-Out event at the 2010 Full Tilt Poker Merit Cyprus Classic and walked away with a cool $373,207 in prize money at just past 5:30 a.m. in Cyprus (10:30 p.m. EST).

David Benyamine led the Full Tilt Poker Merit Cyprus Classic High Roller event at the end of day one.1

By end of day two, however, Bukara had taken over, having been dominant with big pre and post flop bets.2 With the group down to nine players and only the top five spots getting paid, here is how things looked going into day three:

Chip Counts for day 3 of the $25,000 High Roller Freeze-Out:
1 Perica Bukara 951,700
2 Ori Miller 546,000
3 John Dolan 455,500
4 Carter Phillips 401,600
5 David Benyamine 400,300
6 Andrew Feldman 356,000
7 Jon Turner 197,700
8 Sam Trickett 188,200
9 Ziv Caspi 103,500

Seats for day 3 of the $25,000 High Roller Freeze-Out:

Seat 1: Ziv Caspi – 103,500
Seat 2: David Benyamine – 400,300
Seat 3: John Dolan – 455,500
Seat 4: Perica Bukara – 951,700
Seat 5: Andrew Feldman – 356,000
Seat 6: Sam Trickett – 188,200
Seat 7: Ori Miller – 546,000
Seat 8: Jon Turner – 197,700
Seat 9: Carter Phillips – 401,600

On day three, Bukara rode his stack through the day and went on to win the event. The night of Friday, August 20, action whittled down to Bukara,3 Ori Miller,4 and Andrew Feldman.5 Bukara, a native of Serbia who now lives in Germany, lost the lead only once, when play was down to just him and Ori Miller. There was interesting action late between the relatively unknown Miller and Londoner Feldman (a Full Tilt pro). While only three players remained, Miller and Feldman traded places on consecutive hands. Later, Feldman was down to a very small stack and tripled, then doubled up twice. He wasn’t able to hang in there though and was eventually eliminated by Miller.

Miller took his only lead on a fold by Bukara at 9 p.m. EST. Shortly thereafter, the two remaining players came dead even at 10:21 p.m. EST. But by 10:30 p.m. (5:30 a.m. Cyprus time), it was all over. Bukara had eliminated Miller to win the $25,000 High Roller Freeze-Out event.

Final Payouts:

1. Perica Bukara $373,207

2. Ori Miller $207,337

3. Andrew Feldman $124,402

4. David Benyamine $82,935

5. Jon Turner $41,467

A look ahead to the Full Tilt Merit Cyprus Classic Main Event:

On day 1A of the Main Event (Friday, August 20), over 100 players showed up to try their hands at the tables, which made day one more popular than last year’s entire event. Notable players who made it to day one included Nicolas, Chouity, Chip Jett, Dave Colclough, Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi, Tommy Vedes, Chino Rheem, Van Marcus, Kelly Kim, Huseyin Yilmaz, and Julian Gardner. Vedes, Gardner, and Yilmaz were eliminated on day one, the other notables mentioned continued on to the next round of play.

At the end of day 1A, the top chip stacks were:
1 Nicolas Chouity 119,600
2 Alexey Rybin 104,325
3 Hulya Pehlivanlar 95,000
4 Nanos Koustantinos 94,650
5 Aineas Protopapas 82,000
6 Chip Jett 80,750
7 Tamer Ustaoglu 78,250
8 Musa Gunay 78,025
9 Iliodoros Kamatakis 76,175
10 Kevin O’Donnell 74,650

Top chip stacks from day 1B (Saturday, August 21):
1 John Dolan 95,400
2 Manig Loeser 91,550
3 Sorel Mizzi 90,225
4 Sam Trickett 70,000
5 Rob Peltecki 60,000
6 Karina Jett 58,000
7 Andrew Feldman 57,000
8 Andrew Gulyy 52,000
9 Ori Miller 50,000
10 Jeff Hakim 49,000

Action continues on Sunday, August 22 at 2 p.m. Cyprus time (7 a.m. EST) when the remaining 140 players will battle for a place at the Full Tilt Poker Merit Cyprus Classic Main Event final table.

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Filippo Candio is an Italian born professional poker player, Candio is 26 years old and part of November nine in the 2010 World Series of Poker Championship in Las Vegas. Filippo Candio got his start in live tournament action because it’s the only way legally in his country. Filippo Candio is actually considered a villain by some as he enters the finals, in fact one online site would not even sponsor him because of excessive table celebrations and his proud Italian exclamations angering some players and fans. Candio at times does not seem to care about etiquette and sportsmanship and folks always let him know about it. He has reason to be proud though he is the first player from Italy to make it to to the final table making history.