The only known photo of Daniel "Jungleman12" Cates.

It may have just started, but the action in the Re-Durrrr Challenge is already way more interesting than the glacial-paced first chapter of the online poker heads-up battle. Tom Dwan and Daniel Cates have only recently joined battle in the second edition of the Durrrr Challenge, but there's been lots of big hands, and even bigger swings.

To date, Dwan and Jungleman12, as Cates is more commonly known, have completed 5,862 hands. And, so far, Jungleman12 is up $518,191 bucks. That was after Dwan got off to a very strong start, when he lead by over $200,000 after about 1,400 hands or so. Given that both these players take big risks, and are clearly comfortable making huge bets, it's not surprising things have been so up and down.

Besides those roller-coaster swings, what is already making this Durrrr Challenge a lot more compelling than the first version, is the speed at which they're playing. Though it only just started, Dwan and Cates have already played more than 5,000 hands, or 10% of the total for the challenge. By contrast, Dwan and Patrik Antonius, his opponent the first time, went entire months without playing that many hands. In fact, the original Durrrr Challenge is still going, despite the fact it started on February 8th, 2009.

At this rate, maybe it really will be finished in time for the September 14th start of the World Series of Poker Europe. Dwan has stated he was hoping he'd be free of Challenge obligations by then, so he can concentrate on winning a bracelet (and those all-important bracelet bets). 

Tom Dwan is back in action and he couldn't be happier about it.

Everyone in the poker world has been waiting for the original Durrrr Challenge to finish for well over a year now - but that’s not stopping Tom Dwan from getting to work on another challenge in the meantime.

Last night Dwan officially kicked off his second Durrrr Challenge against Daniel Cates. The duo fired up six tables of deep-stacked, heads-up $200/$400 no-limit hold’em for their first Durrrr Challenge session in the early morning hours on Friday. They played more than 1,600 hands before deciding to step away for a short break. But then, in a break with the precedent set by Patrik Antonius in the first challenge, the two came back a little while later to keep going instead of waiting another month before sitting back down.

Known as “jungleman12,” Cates, a CardRunners instructor, has run pretty well against Dwan in the past, racking up some $661,000 in wins against the online pro before this challenge began. The beginning of the first session of their 50,000-hand challenge didn’t go quite as well for him, with Dwan jumping out front with about a $130,000 advantage before the first break. But Cates then came roaring back in the second session, grabbing himself a lead of nearly $200,000 and announcing that this won’t be a pushover.

The two are actually still playing at the moment, with nearly 4,000 hands booked at this point, so it’s hard to say when they plan to stop. But regardless of the ending time, it’s clear already that this challenge will be much more interesting than the Patrik Antonius version of The Neverending Story. You can get continuous updates (and lots of Tom Dwan love) from this raging 2+2 Durrrr Challenge thread - it's already up to 59 pages.

Phil Ivey demonstrates questionable bankroll management.

Apparently even Phil Ivey isn't perfect. While he's considered by almost everyone (not named Phil Hellmuth) to be the best player in the game, even Ivey can have a rough weekend at the online poker tables. And when he goes cold, he can lose a lot of cash fast...like $787,935 in just two days.

The damage came over the course of 2,832 hands of both $200/$400 Cap Pot Limit Omaha and $500/$1,000 Cap No Limit Hold'Em. And yeah, at those kind of stakes, things can go sideways pretty quickly. The damage was done by a few different opponents, including Phil Galfond, Cole South, Hac Dang, Sam Palmer and and online pro with the username Clockwyze.

Despite the rough ride, you can't feel too sorry for Ivey. His online winnings for 2010 currently sit at $2,548,803. Sure, they looked a bit better a few days ago, but he still has enough for rent. If his losing ways continue, and they probably won't, he risks losing his current 2nd place position on this year's money board. Jungleman12 is closing in fast, and currently sits just just about thirteen grand behind Ivey. And at the top of the list of cash earners for the year? Tom Dwan, with $3,862,454 in profit, for 2010 so far.

ABC News takes a look at two online poker players on tonight's Nightline.

The late night news program Nightline has been a mainstay of the ABC television network since 1980 - long before the online poker players who will be featured on the program tonight were born. The August 24, 2010 episode takes a look at 22-year-old Joe Cada, who got his start playing online poker as a teenager before becoming known worldwide as the 2009 WSOP Main Event champion. Also featured is Blaine Brount, a 19-year-old student at the University of Illinois who pays his bills by playing online poker.

As for how Nightline will approach the topic of online poker, it’s hard to say with precision. The show once had a reputation for being more grounded and less sensationalistic than other television news programs back when Ted Koppel was its host, though it has begun to slip a bit since the long-time anchor retired in 2005 and the show’s format changed to cover multiple stories each night. But the online preview of tonight’s episode at the ABC website seems to be poker-friendly, focusing on two young players who learned to manage their bankrolls responsibly and have enjoyed success as a result.

The Nightline feature on online poker will air tonight at 11:35 p.m. ET on ABC.

Kevin Stani turned a small stake into a big payday in Estonia.

An accomplished live tournament pro may have come into the final table of EPT Tallinn with the lead, but it was an online poker player with only a handful of live cashes to his credit who walked away with first place.

Kevin Stani, an online poker player who won his way into the tournament in a $530 satellite he played on a whim, emerged victorious over a field of 420 players on the European Poker Tour’s first stop in the Estonian capital of Tallinn. The Norwegian has been playing online poker for the last seven years with a focus on cash games, but recently he made the decision to play more live tournaments.

Stani, who entered the final table in second place behind chip leader Arnaud Mattern, bobbed and weaved until play was four-handed, when his pocket eights held up against Dmitry Vitkind’s smaller pair and gutshot straight draw to send the Russian to the rail. Then he four-bet shoved holding pocket threes in a blind-versus-blind situation, ran into Mattern’s pocket queens, and turned a trey to bust the pro and set himself up with the chip lead against Konstantin Bilyauer for the title. Stani’s run-good lasted through the final river card, when he got Bilyauer to call off his stack drawing dead.

For the EPT Tallinn win, Stani takes home €400,000 (US $512,800) on his $530 investment, by far the biggest cash of his live tournament career. His previous best was a 127th-place finish in this year’s WSOP Main Event, good for $57,102. With all his recent tournament success, Stani will be one to watch in London this September when the EPT and WSOP Europe converge on the British capital.

The Great Dane isn't so great when it comes to online cash games.

Gus Hansen is one of the most recognizable players in poker today - and he is also a study in how deceiving some numbers can be in poker. Hansen’s live tournament winnings total nearly $7.25 million, more than all but 22 players in the entire world since poker tournaments first began being played in the 1970s. He has three World Poker Tour titles to his name, and he also won the 2008 Aussie Millions main event. Without a doubt, he is one of the most successful tournament poker players in the world.

But when it comes to playing online poker, Hansen prefers the high-stakes cash games against top competition like Tom Dwan and Phil Ivey. His results in those games have been nearly the total opposite of those he’s compiled in live tournaments. He’s down $7.7 million since the beginning of 2007, making him one of the single biggest losers in the game over that time period, with about $800,000 of that total coming just in 2010. So, depending on your perspective, Gus Hansen is either a highly successful poker player, or he’s the fish who keeps the game running.

Naturally the speculation that Gus Hansen is broke is high, but there’s not nearly enough information to back that up. His online poker results are publicly available, but numbers for his live games and his outside business dealings don’t show up on databases. The only really sure thing is that the Great Dane might want to reconsider the players he takes on when he decides to play high-stakes online poker.

Let's see what we've got here...yep, another winning session against Patrik.

For the second time in three days, Tom Dwan and Patrik Antonius got together for a short session in their ongoing Durrrr Challenge. Antonius booked a decent win on Sunday morning, but this morning's session was all about Dwan.

The man known as "durrrr" took Antonius for $459,961.50 this morning in a four-table, heads-up pot-limit Omaha session that lasted just 36 minutes. Dwan grabbed four pots worth at least $139,000 each, including a $157,000 monster when he flopped top set with K-Q-Q-T against Antonius’ two pair with Q-9-8-6, to end the 182-hand session a significant winner.

This morning’s winning session might be just a blip of variance over the course of the 50,000-hand challenge, but it was the one that boosted Dwan’s total take for the matchup with Antonius over the $2 million mark. His total winnings against Antonius right now amount to $2,059,719.50. If he can manage not to have one of the biggest 10,000-hand downswings in poker history, Dwan will earn another $500,000 from the Finn.

The good news for Antonius right now is that he's back in the black after having an awful start to the year, despite his continued misfortune against Tom Dwan. He's been booking winning sessions against nearly everyone else he faces, especially at the shorthanded tables. Once he completes the Durrrr Challenge he should once again be a favorite in most of the games he plays. Hopefully that will motivate him to get this challenge done so that he, Dwan and poker fans can all move on.

If Patrik could win this much 320 times, he'd be even in the Durrrr Challenge.

Tom Dwan and Patrik Antonius first sat down to begin their heads-up challenge in early 2009 and some observers expected them to be finished with the required 50,000 hands within just a few months. With two iterations of the the WSOP having come and gone and the challenge stuck just shy of 40,000 hands in the meantime, rumors abounded that Antonius had bought out of the bet. But this weekend those rumors proved false as the two got another session in, creeping a little bit closer to the end in a challenge that has gone longer than anyone expected.

Dwan and Antonius logged a wee 280-hand session of hold’em and Omaha early Sunday morning, perhaps getting their feet wet before jumping in headfirst later in the week - or, more l ikely, before getting out of the pool and going inside to watch television for the next 12 months straight. It was Antonius who came out ahead this time around, booking a $244,672 win. Of course, Antonius is still down some $1.6 million for the entire challenge - and given the minute number of hands they played compared to the number remaining, he’ll need a pretty incredible run to avoid paying an additional $500,000 to Dwan at the end.

In other Durrrr Challenge news, it’s been confirmed that its namesake will take on online poker star jungleman12 this year. Known to his friends in the real world as 20-year-old University of Maryland economics major Daniel Cates, jungleman12 has won more than $2 million this year already. Whatever happens, it’s almost a sure bet that the two won’t take half as long to finish their challenge as Patrik Antonius has with Tom Dwan.

Daniel Negreanu dresses like this even when he plays online.

There are many who say Daniel Negreanu is a dinosaur, one of the old generation of pros who've been eclipsed by the new online poker wunderkinds. They say that the old guard is doomed to slowly slip into obscurity, surpassed by a new generation of Tom Dwans.

But then the old relic goes and has a week like this. In the last five days, Negreanu is up $332,770, playing $100/$200 No Limit Hold'Em. And he's doing it online, where some of those aging dinosaurs fear to tread. In fact, Daniel has recently made a concerted effort to improve his online game, with the hopes that it will prevent him from actually becoming that obsolete old-timer that some say he already is. And not only might it make his game better, he also doesn't have to worry about anyone wearing sunglasses when he plays on the net.

Up until this week, he'd been trending down for the last year, at least in online action. But his 1/3rd of a million dollar win puts him back into profits for 2010. And combine that with his second-place finish at last year's WSOP-Europe Main Event, and a few decent results at the recently-ended 2010 WSOP, and Negreanu's game isn't looking too shabby.

Master spy? "Practiced deceiver"? Treasonous schemer? Who cares. (photo courtesy of Facebook)

She's sexy, has fiery red hair, keeps a Facebook page, and is involved in one of the biggest espionage cases since the Cold War thawed...and to top it all off, Anna Chapman was involved in an online poker scheme. Chapman, or whatever her real name turns out to be, is one of eleven people arrested and accused of spying for Russia.

She was living the good life, socializing with the upper-crust of society and living in a $2,100 per month apartment in New York City. And, according to the FBI, she was also a "practiced deceiver" who secretly transmitted sensitive private information from her laptop to a Russian government computer. She was eventually caught when she passed along a fake passport to an undercover police officer, capping off a sting a year in the making.

Undoubtedly more of her background will come to light in the coming weeks. But one interesting tidbit that's already surfaced, is that she had at one point tried to raise funds for some kind of online poker initiative. One of her Facebook friends, a man named Alexander Sasha Galitsky, works for a Russia-based capital investment firm. He said he'd met with Chapman in the past about various business ventures. In an email, he says: "She tried to raise capital for her online real-estate business. After this, she tried to speak with us about some other initivative like online poker."

Chapman, along with the other ten members of the alleged Russian spy ring, face serious criminal charges. They've been charged with conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the U.S. attorney general. If found guilty, they face up to five years in prison.