Even though his first “Durrrr Challenge” match against Patrik Antonius is not officially over –Antonius is down around $2 million with roughly 10,000 hands to go—Tom Dwan has decided to start a new match against his next opponent, Daniel Cates, better known to online poker enthusiasts as jungleman12.

The former student, and now instructor at Cardrunners, has been one of the top earners in online poker throughout 2010, and has gained a fearsome reputation for his No Limit Holdem prowess, especially in heads-up play.

Cates is a relative newcomer to the world of high-stakes poker, but has been one of the biggest winners in 2010, afterbasically being a break-even type player in the few shots he had previously taken at the nosebleed games. On his Cardrunners blog he credits a new approach to the game for his recent success. Citing a newfound work ethic and deeper understanding of the poker, Cates has crushed the best poker players in the world to the tune of $3.1 million thus far in 2010 –further proof that it’s often the little things in poker that make you a winner.

Unlike the slow pace, and conflicting schedules, that plagued the Antonius vs. Dwan challenge match –causing many in the online poker community to lose interest in what has become a year and a half long snooze-fest– Cates and Dwan have managed to log an impressive 5,862 in just the first day of play. As Dwan stated in the chat-log that was the Genesis of the challenge match, ‘We could bang out 50,000 hands in two weeks!’

And it appears the two may in fact do just that! Another change from the Anotnius vs. Dwan matchup is that jungleman12 and durrrr will most likely be playing No Limit Holdem exclusively, instead of PLO, which will likely attract even more railbirds than the Antonius/Dwan matches garnered.

So far it’s the Maryland University college student Cates who is getting the best of durrrr –although Antonius had an early lead in their sessions as well. Cates has always done well against durrrr in the past, so we’ll have to wait and see if he can continue his success after the two have logged 30,000 hands against one another.

At this point Cates has a $518,190 lead with just under 6,000 hands completed –after being down close to $130,000 after 1,600 hands to start the challenge match. The turnaround began when Cates managed to win a massive $192,984 pot when his Aces held-up against Dwan’s hand.

The stipulations that Dwan sets for the match are that the two players must play 50,000 hands of heads-up poker. If Dwan is the winner after 50,000 hands of poker he will keep whatever he has won, in addition to $500,000 more from Cates. Should Cates defeat Dwan he will also keep his winnings, in addition to $1.5 million more from Dwan! So, durrrr is effectively laying 3-to-1 odds to his opponent: Showing an extreme confidence in his abilities.