First they invent, saunas, and now this.

In most of the world, you'd have to describe the relationship between poker players and governments as icy, at best. But that doesn't seem to be the case in Finland.

The ancestral home of Patrik Antonius and Ilari Sahamies has recently opened a one-of-a-kind clinic and website aimed at providing assistance for poker players who have suffered one bad beat too many. It's called "Tilt" (it's in Finnish, so you'll want to let Google translate it for you) and it's for players who have gone on tilt, and are, according to a sketchy translation of the website: "guided by hatred, for example, feelings of despair and surrender".

Anyone who "loses contact with his game management and emotions" is welcome to drop by the office in downtown Helsinki to get some help. In the future, the website will also provide a variety of resources for tilting players.

Which leads to the question of what exactly is there at the clinic to help someone on tilt? Are there rooms that constantly play relaxing elevator muzak, or videos of puppies and kittens frolicking in sunny meadows? Or maybe there's just a kitchen stocked with a wide variety of soothing herbal teas and bongs? Whatever it is, here's hoping the idea catches on over in North America, because an anti-tilt chill-out clinic on the Las Vegas strip could save a lot of people a lot of money and angst.

Patrik Antonius loving life.

Sure, poker is a game of variance, but winning over $332,000 in just 600 hands counts as an amazing session for anyone. And that's what Patrik Antonius did earlier this week, in an epic online poker session.

Antonius has proven to be one of the best high-stakes players in the game, and consistently comes out ahead no matter who the opposition. Well, except maybe when he's playing Tom Dwan. In his short but sweet session on Wednesday, he took down Ilari Sahamies and Phil Galfond and a few others, for a third of a million dollars.

Sahamies continued his non-Antonius-esque run, dropping $149,400 to Antonius on the night, as the two played Cap Pot Limit Omaha and 7-Game. Galfond didn't fare much better, donating  $197,563 to Patrik's retirement fund.

Though he didn't tangle with Antonius, Gus Hansen found other ways to get into trouble. He continued his epically bad 2010, with a $266,243 loss on the evening. His running total for the year is $1.1 million in the hole. And his 2009 wasn't so great either.

Randy Couture and a friend discuss the best way to play suited connectors. (photo courtesy of MMA Junkie)

Poker After Dark is getting a lot more buff this week. And no, that doesn't mean Tom Dwan has been hitting the juice. A couple of the biggest, meanest names in mixed martial arts are trading in the mat for the felt for the next few days.

All this week, UFC vets Randy Couture and Dan Henderson will mix it up with some big name pros on the late night poker show. They'll be joined by Bruce Buffer, the UFC's esteemed announcer, and a pretty good poker player himself. Also on hand will be Patrik Antonius, Howard Lederer and Erick Lindgren

Besides doing everything he can not to antagonize Henderson or Couture, Lederer will be looking for his fourth win on Poker After Dark. That would tie the record currently held by Johnny Chan. Antonius has one victory on the show so far, while Lindgren hasn't turned any of his six appearances into a victory.

Episodes run on NBC this week, at 2:05 am every night through Friday. The Director's Cut (which includes highlights from the whole week) will show on Saturday night, after Saturday Night Live.

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.

Tom Dwan listens to instructions from his home planet.

Tom Dwan may not have won millions in side-bets by taking home a bracelet at the WSOP, but that's not stopping him from upping the ante in the high-stakes poker world.

It looks like he may be taking on a new opponent in the durrrr Challenge. That's his standing bet to take on anyone, except Phil Galfond, in a 50,000 hand match of $200/$400 (or higher) NLHE or PLO. To the victor goes whatever cash they won, plus a monster side bet. If Dwan comes out on top, the loser forks out an extra $500,000. If the challenger wins, Tom shells out an extra $1.5 million.

So far, Dwan's faced off with Patrik Antonius. That challenge is still underway, and has been, seemingly, since Phil Hellmuth last won a bracelet. But despite that, Dwan may be about to face off with the online poker pro Jungleman12.

The two shared this chat exchange while playing the other night:

durrrr: ok gg
jungleman12: gg
durrrr: y dont u take challenge
durrrr: since u never lose to me
jungleman12: i will prob
jungleman12: maybe
jungleman12: isnt bt next or something?
durrrr: i can do 2 at once
durrrr: ship ivey 500k n we will work out details
durrrr: get my aim from someone
jungleman12: ok

It's not confirmed, but it certainly sounds like Dwan will be facing off with Jungleman12 in the immediate future. And when they finally finish, probably some time in the next decade, you can find the results of their match right here.

Could this be Patrik Antonius' year for WSOP stardom?

Of course there's obviously still a huge amount of poker to go, and its way too early to speculate on who might win the 2010 WSOP Main Event... But we're not going to let that stop us. Because there's one very interesting name hanging around near the top of the field after Day 3 - Patrik Antonius.

Between his frequent TV appearances, his appearance in the Durrr Challenge, and his epic million dollar showdowns with the online poker degenerate Isildur1, Antonius has become increasingly familiar to those who follow poker even on a casual basis. But he has yet to break out into the kind of mainstream stardom of a Phil Hellmuth or a Phil Ivey. Of course, both those gentlemen have a whole lot of WSOP bracelets between them, while Antonius has yet to win a World Series event. But could that change this year?

All the talk in the last day or two has been about Johnny Chan's surprising position at or near the top of the Main Event leaderboard. But Antonius goes into Day 4 with a healthy stack, and a position in the top 10% of the field. He currently sits at #118 (out of 1,240 remaining players) with 170,000 chips. James Carroll has 803,000 to sit at #1, but we all know how quickly things can change. There are lots of other great players (most with the last name Mizrachi) still alive in the Main Event, so Antonius is still a long-shot to cash, let alone win the thing. But he definitely has the skill, and the demeanor, to do some damage in a tournament like this.

His best finish at a WSOP was in 2007, when he finished 3rd in the $10,000 Pot Limit Omaha event, taking home $311,394. All told, his live tournament total winnings are in excess of $2,800,000, with $750,000ish of that coming from his twelve WSOP cashes. And his cash game winnings likely far exceed anything he's won in tournaments, thanks, in part, to his epic tilts with Isildur1, including his winning the largest pot in online poker history. 

Tom Dwan and Patrik Antonius looking justifiably sleepy. (photo courtesy of PokerNews)

The latest session of the durrrr Challenge should definitely prove two things. First, Patrik Antonius and Tom "durrrr" Dwan may actually finish some time before the predicted end of the world in 2012. And, second, this thing is a serious grind.

Eight and a half hours after sitting down to play some $200/$400 Pot Limit Omaha, they had completed 2,677 hands of poker... or just over 5% of the 50,000 hands needed to complete the challenge. And despite being up over $60K, Antonius barely put a dent in Dwan's overall lead. Like we said, this thing is a grind.

So even with Antonius' most recent windfall, Dwan still leads by $1,847,105. And that means that the Finnish pro only has only 14,020 hands to make up that lead. Unless something crazy happens, durrrr is going to win, and pocket an extra $500,000 for his troubles.

The whole thing has been just one of the many ups and downs in Patrik Antonius' year. In the last twelve months, he's been down as much as $3.15 million. But since March 12th, he's climbed back up out of that deep, dark hole, and earned back about $2.64 million of those losses. For Tom Dwan, the last year has been trending generally upwards, with the exception of a little $2 million or so blip when he insisted on taking on Isildur1.

Patrik Antonius dishes on Isildur1, durrrr and Ziigmund.

Poker pro Patrik Antonius might not be the most talkative guy at the tables, but when he does open his mouth, he tends to say some interesting stuff. This, despite the fact that he used to be a male model. He recently sat down for an interview (which you can watch here) where he talks about, among other things, battling it out with Isildur1 and Tom "durrrr" Dwan.

It's been a crazy year for the Finnish star. While most pros make headlines with big tournament wins, or on the poker TV show circuit, Antonius has been getting lots of attention for a variety of epic head-to-head tilts.

The biggest and most talked-about was his super high-stakes battle with the online legend Isildur1. Patrik took on the mysterious Swedish phenom over the course of a couple weeks, and they ended up playing the biggest pot in online poker history.

Antonius has also been tangling with the young American online star Tom Dwan, in the durrrr Challenge. This 50,000 hand battle has tilted badly in favor of Dwan in the last couple months, but it's not over yet. In fact, at the rate they're going it may never actually end.

Patrik talks about the challenge of taking on both those players in the video, starting at about the 9:30 mark. Fans of multi-tabling should be amused at Antonius' admission that his brain just can't handle anything more than three or four tables at once.

The video is pretty long, at about 50 minutes or so, but there's lots of good stuff in there. One other highlight is hearing Antonius dish about the questionable poker etiquette of his Finnish rival Ilari "Ziigmund" Sahamies. Apparently Patrik isn't a big fan of players who hit a big online pot then run for the hills, a practice that Ziigmund is somewhat known for.

After a rough start to 2010, things are looking up for Mantonius.

Patrik Antonius was one of the biggest winners in online poker in 2009, profiting to the tune of nearly $9 million, but things haven’t gone quite so well for him in 2010. For starters he hit a massive downswing in the Durrrr Challenge against Tom Dwan, finding himself nearly $2 million in the hole to the wunderkind with about a third of the challenge remaining. Then he found that his superpowers had worn off against other players, too, leaving him stuck nearly $4 million on the year and probably wondering when the slide was going to end.

But in the last few days the Finn has found a way to turn things around. He’s earned more than $600,000 off players like Ashton "theASHMAN103" Griffin since the beginning of April, and if you factor in a few other winning sessions at the end of March he’s up more than $1 million in the last week. It’s hard to say exactly what might have changed for Antonius, but in past interviews he has mentioned how important it is for him to be able to work out often - maybe he's been able to hit the gym and find his calm place.

Even with his recent wins factored in, Patrik Antonius is still stuck somewhere in the region of $2.4 million this year. But considering the way online poker started out for him in 2010, you have to imagine he’s a lot more likely these days to whistle while he works.