Are you one of the many online poker fans impatient to see the end of the Dwan 50 000 hand Challenge before the Apocalypse? Started early this year and still barely half completed, the Challenge has stretched the patience of many observers with its sluggish on/off performance.
A 22-year-old Russian pro showed this week that it is possible to move those poker hands along at a better than fair clip when he racked up 40 088 hands in a single Internet session….over just 18-some hours!
The Pokerstars.com blog reported on the record-breaking feat in which player ‘innerpsy’ set a new benchmark for speed and endurance in a challenge hosted on the giant online poker site by the Russian forum Card Game Masters.
With a virtual audience estimated at around 10 000 railbirds following his every move via two video streams and a live radio broadcast, innerpsy burned his way through the record number of hands, getting through more in just 18 hours and 33 minutes than many players manage in a lifetime.
“Before this challenge I never actually played more than 20 000 hands in a day before but the idea came up and I just figured I could do it,” he told the PokerStars blog. “It was one of the toughest things I have ever accomplished, but I am proud I managed it.”
Card Player magazine took a stab at illustrating the magnitude of the task faced by innerpsy, opining: “Give the dealer 30 hands per hour. We’ll be generous again and figure you can sit still for ten hours. That means you saw around 300 hands between the time you started playing and the time you got up for the night. With that total, you’d be a little short of the new world record.”