Not a super exciting week in poker news, but some stuff has been going on, so here's a brief recap:

2009 WSOP Main Event champion Joe Cada continued his media blitz that has so far featured him ringside at Madison Square Gardens for WWE Raw, on the Late Show with David Letterman, on SportsCenter on ESPN and now on the American Morning show on CNN. He may not be the most effusive guy on camera, but he definitely seems to be getting more camera time than that guy that won last year, … John? Matthew? Mark? Luke? Wait, we know this… Dennis! That's right, Dennis Phillips. What? He didn't win? Well, then we have no idea.

Joe Cada on CNN American Morning

Tom "durrrr" Dwan has been taking on some of the worlds highest-stakes poker players in the heads-up Durrrr Million Dollar Challenge at the Les Ambassadeurs club in London. Each opponent ponies up $250,000 to tak eon the online prodigy in their choice of No Limit Holdem or Pot Limit Holdem. For the first day of the challenge, Dwan took on Marcello “luckexpress” Marigliano in No Limit Holdem for 11 hours and Pot Limit Holdem for the last hour. At the end, durrrr ended up down $25,500. The next day he took on notorious aggro Swede Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies in a match that saw both of them rebuy for $250,000 and end up so close that Dwan only managed to eek out a $68,000 victory. The challenge concludes when he takes on Sammy “Any Two” George tomorrow/today, or however these timezone things work.

Bluff Europe: Ilari ‘Ziigmund’ Sahamies' Turn in Durrrr Million Dollar Challenge

The LAPT Playa Conchal is already halfway through Day 2 in the beautiful town of Playa Conchal in Costa Rica. Honestly, who cares about poker in a place like this. Instead of reciting boring chip counts, just take a deep breath, look at the pic at the top of this post, close your eyes and just imagine being on that beach. Your welcome. For the rest of you, there are 60 players left out of the original 259. The only person we feel like is worth mentioning that is near the top of the chip counts is Maridu Mayrinck cos she's a super cool Brazilian chick. Further down the chip counts is Bodog online poker regular Bolivar "ramux" Palacios, for whom we are also rooting.

LAPT Playa Conchal Live Reporting

Here is durrrr's quote from that article:

“I’m making this heads-up challenge to the world. Anyone can accept. Four tables, minimum of $200/$400, and I’ll put up $1.5 million to their $500,000. We play 50,000 hands minimum and if they end up a dollar after rake they keep the side money or whatever. So basically, if you and I played and you won a dollar, you would get my $1.5 million and if I won a dollar I would win your $500,000. So I’m giving a million dollars free if anyone thinks they can do it.”

The point worth noting here is that the $1.5 million and the $500,000 are just a side bet. Playing $200/$400 PLO can result in swings of millions by itself and the winner gets to keep the winnings plus the side bet. So, this challenge could potentially be worth several million over the course of the 50,000 hands.

According to Phil Ivey's podcast on PokerRoad yesterday (listen here), it sounds like he was the first to jump on this challenge and has been joined by David Benyamine and Patrik Antonius. He also anticipates that someone is going to lose $3 to $4 million before this is all said and done.

To stay up to date on all the latest developments, check out the 2+2 thread here or just come back to the Beat for a much more concise and less annoying summary of what's going on.

In the meantime some new faces have moved to the forefront while a few leaders held their top spots.

Online poker phenom Tom Dwan, a.k.a Durrr, currently has the lead with 247,000. This is Dwan’s first year playing at the WSOP as he’s only 21. Big things are expected of him and it’s already looking like he won’t disappoint.

While railbirding Dwan he overhead Ralph Perry, who is sitting at his table, ask him where he learned to play all of the HORSE games seeing as he was only 21. Dwan just smiled and mumbled something about playing all over the place online. We had to bite our tongues to stop from shouting, “They are these Intertubes where you can do all sorts of cool stuff like surf porn and play poker!”

Abraham Mosseri is currently in second place with 246,000, Bill Chen is third with 236,000, Farzad Bonyadi is fourth with 230,000 and Pat Pezzin is fifth with 222,000.

Poker pro Patrick Antonius has managed to build on the sizable stack that he began the day with and is now sitting in sixth place with 216,000.

French poker hottie Isabelle Mercier is close behind Antonius with 210,000. For the picture, you are welcome.

The WSOP Main Event starts July 3 but there’s still time to get your seat. Check out Bodog’s WSOP online satellites to get here. The last chance WSOP qualifier is this Saturday at 3:15 p.m. ET.