Full Tilt Durrrr Million Dollar Challenge – day one review Press release
Marigliano comes out on top in Durrrr’s opening encounter
The opening match of the Full Tilt Durrrr Million Dollar Challenge saw Italian Marcello “luckexpress” Marigliano come out on top after 12 hours of play with Tom “Durrrr” Dwan at the Les Ambassadeurs club in London.
The duo bought in for $250,000 at the beginning of the match and as the clock struck 2am and the last hand was over, Marigliano ended with $272,500 – a $22,500 gain – having played No-Limit Hold’em until the final hour where they switched to Pot-limit Omaha.
Durrrr won the greater number of pots – 55 per cent to Marcello’s 45 per cent – but the key hands and bigger pots went in the Italian’s favour to see him triumph on the first of three days of action.
“In the end I won a small amount but I’m happy though as I won with bluffs,” said Marcello. “He raised a lot pre-flop and you have to play tight but I made some good moves and I’m happy I proved I can play with Tom.”
Both players were down 100k on more than one occasion and Durrrr rebought as his stack dropped below 150k when Marcello bluffed him off a 100k pot with King-high, but he fought back to move 100k to the good. Marigliano levelled the match up when he flopped a full-house with A3 on the 3AA board and as the day sped to its conclusion, the Italian moved close to 100k in front when they both held hearts - Durrrr with six-deuce, Marigliano with Queen-seven – and two hearts came on the flop. Marcello was all-in before the Ace of hearts on the turn gave him the pot and a healthy lead over Dwan before they moved to Pot-limit Omaha. Durrrr clawed his way back in the final hour, but goes into the second day on the back of defeat.
“It was a really aggressive match,” said Durrrr. “There was a time when Marcello folded 20 hands in a row then the next hand he picked up a gutshot and decided to win the 150k out there. But he made two really good reads and without either one of them he ends up down 50k or so but instead he’s up. They were key hands really and there were some other big hands but it was an interesting match – of course I wish I’d won.”
The small swing in Marigliano’s favour belies the action with Durrrr recording a button raise frequency of 84 per cent, and Dwan seemed surprised at the end of the match that they had gone the distance.
“It’s so crazy that at the end there was just a 25k difference in the end – that’s absurd. It’s so unlikely that one of us didn’t lose 500k,” said the American, who faces Finnish star Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies today (Wednesday). “I was up 150k at one or two points and down 200k – but it still wasn’t as swingy as I thought it would be, we didn’t have many big hand versus big hand spots, or even medium hand versus medium hand spots. I expect there to be more action in the matches with Ziigmund and Sammy George.”
Durrrr and Ziigmund will begin their match at 2pm, starting off by playing Pot-Limit Omaha, with George ending the challenge on Thursday. Both matches will be blogged live at
www.matchroompokerforum.co.uk, where you can also view the blog from the opening day.
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