In hopes of motivating himself to play more hands before the World Cup, Brazilian PLO grinder Marcelo “urubu111” Freire (pictured) has bet the Two Plus Two community that he can play 500,000 hands in just 45 days and finish in the black.

In his post on a high-stakes PLO message board, Freire stated that he would attempt to play a half-million hands between April 28 and June 12. All play would take place at PLO $1/$2, $2/$4, and $3/$6 six-max or full ring, with PokerStars Zoom tables excluded. Heads-up play would be allowed, but only when attempting to start new tables.

Of that massive number of hands, he specified that at least 100,000 must be played at $1/$2, with another 100,000 needed at $2/$4. There is no minimum play required at $3/$6 due to the fact that the limit has become a “ghost town” since $2/$5 Zoom was introduced.

On top of it all, Freire won’t be able to simply grind mindlessly; he’ll need to finish the challenge up at least one cent to win the bet. Flips are forbidden, so if Freire is stuck for a large amount near the finish line, he won’t be able to blindly gamble to get above even.

If things are going badly for either party, he’s included the option to buy the other out. Of course, bettors can only make an offer and neither party is obligated to accept.

To get in on the action, Freire asked for 2:1 on his money, with him winning two dollars for every one dollar wagered. The grinder originally set out to take a maximum of $40,000 in bets against his $20,000, but the list of takers grew so quickly that Freire ended up booking $60,000 to his $30,000.

Forum posters were skeptical of his ability to complete the grueling task. Christian charder Harder had no trouble putting up $26,000, while Sira Al Aziz and verve.oasis threw in $10,000 apiece. Try__An__Hit chimed in, saying that that the Brazilian “should have gone 3:1 [since] it filled this fast.”

While Freire didn’t want to put up more than $30,000 of his own cash, interest was so great that a healthy pool of side action was struck up for those who showed up late to the party.

Freire has since gotten off to a rocky start, losing $4,353 in his first 24 hours of play, putting in 16,000 hands in the process. On Tuesday, he grinded out 14,000 hands and lost another $700. On Thursday, he had his worst day yet, losing $9,000, but racked up another 16,000 hands toward his goal. Of course, with hundreds of thousands of hands to go, there’s plenty of time to reverse that trend.

While he has a lot of people betting good money against him, supporters were out in force cheering him on as he worked toward his lofty goal. “Such a good thing for online poker; urubu’s creating a lot of action,” said HelloDeli. “I bet both the other regs and PokerStars are happy with this. Rooting so hard for urubu, would be such a hero if he gets this done,” said mattb7755.

Joe “ChicagoJoey” Ingram embarked on a similarly arduous challenge last year when he accepted bets to play 500,000 hands of PLO in only 30 days. While Ingram thinks the volume is doable, he’s more skeptical about turning a profit while playing at such a high volume.

For Freire’s challenge, he’s serving as a judge and has released a podcast where he speaks on the difficulty of what the Brazilian is facing. He plans to put out another when the challenge is finished. You can check out the first one here.

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