Nosebleed round-up

Player of the week: jungleman12

If 2010 was the year of Dan ‘jungleman12’ Cates, then someone must have forgot to check the calendar. This week youngster added another $805,449 to his ever-growing bankroll.

Since losing his much-hyped SuperStar Showdown last month, Cates has gone from strength to strength, and has almost $2,000,000 to his name in 2011 alone. This week the 21-year-old extended his lead in the durrrr Challenge, two months after he and Dwan last took their seats in the protracted challenge.

After just 348 hands of $200/$400 no-limit Hold’em action, Dwan was stuck for $122 and Cates now has a $800,000 cushion on his rival, with roughly 30,000 hands left to play.

But while Cates was crushing all who challenged him this week, the bottom the high-stakes pile was a who’s who of poker’s big names.

Phil Ivey and Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan have had inauspicious starts to high-stakes life in 2011, and the duo endured another painful week on the tables, dropping almost $500,000 and $650,000 respectively.

But their troubles were put into the shade by mystery Canadian XWINK, who conspired to lose a staggering $934,000 in seven days.

XWINK appeared on the high-stakes radar at the start of the month, when he/she turned $4,000 into $2,000,000 in less than four days. But since then, XWINK has lost $1,000,000 in a week, clawed some back and then taken another high-stakes pounding.

When we last checked XWINK was still up $500,000 for the year, but who knows how long that will last?

Hand of the week:

This week’s honour goes to Gus Hansen, whose unbelievable run of form in 2011 continued this week as the Great Dane took his winnings to just over $3,000,000 since the turn of the year.

In a PLO bloodbath with online legend Andreas ‘skjervoy’ Torbergsen, Hansen pocketed a neat $107,754 when his Jd-8d-7d-6s flopped the nuts against the Norweigian’s As-6c-Kh-2s.

On Full Tilt’s $500/$1,000 tables, Hansen called Torbergsen’s fourbet shove on a 4c-3d-5d board with his nut straight and inside straight flush draw. Torbergsen’s six-high straight was drawing virtually dead, and after running it twice, Hansen clawed in the six-figure pot.

Winners*

NoPasaran  $935,199
Jungleman12  $805,499
Sauce123  $501,297
O Fortuna PLS  $454,332
OMGClayAiken  $357,468

Losers*

XWINK  -$934,610
durrrr  -$638,947
Phil Ivey  -$470,022
compris  -$453,309
LooneyGerbil  -$364,780

*as of March 17. Figures courtesy of HighStakes DB