On Wednesday, May 27, the main subject of the scandal, poker pro Daniel "Jungleman" Cates finally confessed, and shared his statement of apology on Twitter.
The infamous Instagram star Dan Bilzerian accused Daniel "Jungleman" Cates of ‘ghosting' along with Sina Taleb in a high-stakes poker game hosted by Bill Perkins.
It all started this sunny morning of Sunday, May 24, when Bill Perkins shook Twitter with a highly interesting story, that a major cheating scandal has occurred, one he believes would make the Mike Postle scandal look trivial in comparison, as this scandal involved famous ‘heroes' of the poker world. However, he did not say exactly who it was.
It was a little after a month has passed since we last heard about the latest skit on the longest-running "poker-drama series" that is, Borgata and their quest to retrieve what they lost from Phil Ivey's edge sorting case, and now two poker players have voiced their complaints as they want their share of Ivey's 2019 WSOP win that Borgata took away unscrupulously.
Rumored to have won an undisclosed amount at a cash game this weekend in the French city of Cannes, Dan "jungleman" Cates celebrated his victory by surrounding himself with nude Playboy-style bunnies!
Before 2018 ended, poker pro Dan ‘Jungleman' Cates called out Tom ‘durrrr' Dwan through Twitter, asking the high-stakes poker pro when to resume their long-stagnant "Durrrr Challenge".
Of course, given that the former Full Tilt Poker ambassador has not touched his Twitter account since July 2018, many are not expecting him to answer so soon. Those who follow him would believe that Dwan is entirely not interested in completing this challenge that started back in 2010.
On December 23, Gus Hansen posted on Instagram a juicy high-stakes game at the Bobby's Room in Bellagio where he was at a table with Dan Jungleman Cates and Phil Ivey.
Doyle Brunson shall be the main feature of Poker After Dark's "Godfather Week" and he will be playing two special high-stakes mixed game sessions right inside Bobby's Room at the Bellagio in October 23 and 24.
On Wednesday night, Dan "jungleman12" Cates made a surprising announcement while he was on Doug Polk's podcast regarding his tribulation that started back in 2010 with fellow pro poker player Tom "durrrr" Dwan.
The most expensive tournament in World Poker Tour history will be played at the WPT National Philippines in January 2016. The tournament will have a buy-in of $200,000 and, according to WPT.com, some of the biggest names in poker have already confirmed that they will be taking part.
Poker King Club President Winfred Yu revealed to PokerNews about a week ago that Phil Ivey and Daniel "jungleman12" Cates were in Manila for some high stakes cash games. Believe it or not but, according to Yu, some games had blinds of HK$20,000/$40,000/$80,000 (approx. $2,500/$5,000/$10,000).
In 2009, Tom "durrrr" Dwan was at the top of his career playing high-stakes heads-up cash games online. The fact is that he was so confident in his game that he offered anyone 3-1 odds on $500k who could beat him in heads up after 50,000 hands. He posted the below message on a poker forum.
In July 2014, high-stakes poker profiles Daniel "jungleman12" Cates and Phil Ivey paid $1 million each to bailout Richard Yong and his son Wai Yong, who both stood accused of accepting illegal bets on 2014 FIFA World Cup. Richard Yong was later freed from all charges, and now Cates has received his $1,000,000 bail money back + an extra $63.
The second (of three) Day 1 flight drew a field of 173 players (10 less than Day 1a), and approximately 91 remained after seven 90-minute levels of poker. Ian Wassell finished the day at the top of the chip counts with 229,500.
On Sunday, the first starting day of three kicked off at Crown Casino in Melbourne, Australia. 183 players bought in for $10,600 each (8 more than Day 1a of last year's Main Event) and 97 players were still sitting at the tables after seven 90-minutes levels of play.
In 2009, Tom "durrrr" Dwan was at the height of his career and announced the durrrr challenge on an online poker forum to get some action: "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."
In case you missed it: World Poker Tour Alpha8 Johannesburg ($100,000 buy-in) kicked off last Friday and saw 10 entries (9 players + 1 rebuy by Antonio Esfandiari). On Saturday, the final 7 players return for the second day of play and, after several hours of thrilling poker, Daniel "Jungleman" Cates ended up as the last man standing for $500,000 in prize money along with the prestigious Alpha8 trophy and a 24k special edition pair of Monster headphones.
Besides Cates, Kinesh Pather received $275,000 for his runner-up finish and Jason Mercier took home $200,000 for finishing in third place. Jeff Gross, who was the chip leader for sometime with 4 remaining players, ended up as the bubble boy in 4th place.
Just about three years ago, Tom "durrrr" Dwan and Daniel "jungleman12" Cates agreed to play 50,000 hands as a part of a heads-up challenge at Full Tilt Poker. The rules were that Dwan would get $500,000 from Cates if he won the challenge, and Cates would get $1,500,000 from Dwan if he won. Now, as you probably already know, the two pros have only played about 19,000 hands and it seems like a lifetime ago when they played last.
Now the good news... according to a forum post by Daniel Cates, the challenge is set to resume in August. Cates wrote that he and Dwan have agreed to play a minimum of 4,000 hands in August and a minimum of 8,000 hands the followings months until the challenge is completed.
Cates is currently holding the lead with a $1,251,059 profit after 19,335 played hands. Besides that, he's been running very good at Full Tilt Poker as of late, so you can't blame him for wanting to complete the challenge and, most probably, get $1.5 million from Tom Dwan.
The plan for Day 2 was to play six 90-minute levels of poker, but the tournament director had to stop the action earlier when only 36-players remained. Ludovic Lacay (2012 EPT San Remo winner) finished day with the chip lead (351,400) and Mike Sexton (241,500) and Marvin Rettenmaier (187,700) also made it through the day with big stacks. Besides the players mentioned above, Kara Scott, Matt Salsberg, Giacomo Fundaro, Liv Boeree and Dan "Jungleman" Cates made it through Day 2.
The average stack is 144,166 and there are many players with plenty of chips to gamble with, so it's very hard to predict what will happen during Day 3. One thing is certain, though: it will be a very entertaining day of poker with so many well known faces racing towards the final table - where a first prize of $180,097 is up for grabs!
On Monday, the first day of the WPT Venice Main Event kicked off at the the oldest casino in the world: Casinò di Venezia (opened in 1638). Only 65-players signed up for the first day, but luckily many of them were well-known faces from around the world including Matt Salsberg, Daniel Cates, Kara Scott, Mike Sexton, Gaelle Bumann and Marvin Rettenmaier.
After 8 levels of play, the first day concluded with 32 players and poker amateur Stephen Behm had the largest stack (188,000). Two-time WPT champ Marvin Rettenmaier (picture) is ranked second with 115,000 chips, and WPT commentator and poker ambassador Mike Sexton is not far behind with 99,900 chips.
We will be back with another update tomorrow! Stay tuned!
In case you didn't watch the live stream yesterday: It was a really thrilling final table of PartyPoker Premier League VI! Over the course of the final table 6 of 8 players took turns at holding the lead, and it took almost 5 levels before the first player (Talal Shakerchi) was eliminated.
Jennifer Tilly, Tobias Reinkemier and Daniel Cates all busted out during the 5th level, which left 4 players fighting for the top prize of $450,000. When four-handed play kicked off it was Jonathan Duhamel who had the biggest stack. However, he was out next after doubling up Sam Trickett and then losing his remaining chips to Dan Shak
Now all 4 heats of Group A are in the books. Daniel "Jungleman" Cates ended up winning the final heat for 16 points. Jonathan Duhamel, who already had secured a final table spot before heat 4 kicked off, finished second for 11 points and Sam Trickett received 8 points for finishing in third place.
The World Poker Tour Copenhagen Main Event attracted a total of 229 players this time. After two days of play, the field has been reduced to 141 with Day 1A winner Andre Petrovic (picture), from Sweden, out in front with 220,400 chips. Day 2 kicks off at 12:00 CET (03:00 PDT) and the biggest names in the remaining squad of players are Sean Jazayeri (91k), Theo Jorgensen (53k), Kara Scott (43k), Steve O'Dwyer (38k), Marvin Rettenmaier (31k) and Ana Marquez (26k). Famous players who were eliminated during Day 1A and Day 1B: Tony G, Daniel "Jungleman" Cates, Ville Wahlbeck, Anton Wigg & Ramzi Jelassi.
The final match between Daniel "jungleman / w00ki3z" Cates and Ben "Sauce123" Sulsky took 3,179 hands (about 10 hours) to complete. Cates dominated most of the match with his aggressive and creative style of playing heads-up poker. Sulsky only made a short comeback about 8 hours into the match, but Cates proved too strong for him to handle.
The All-Star Showdown semifinals were played over the weekend. Team Online's Ike Haxton and Ben "Sauce123" Sulsky battled for 19 hours (about 4,200 hands) until a winner had been crowned: Ben Sulsky. Not long after this marathon match came to an end it was time for the second semifinal between Phil "MrSweets28" Galfond and Daniel "w00ki3z" Cates. This match took a little more than seven hours to run through just over 3,000 hands. Cates was down for the most of the beginning hours of the match, however, he made an amazing comeback in the last 800 hands of the match and managed to defeat Sulsky.
The final of the All-Star Showdown is being played right now. Sulsky and Cates are guaranteed at least $250,000 each. The winner will take home an amazing $550k and the first All-Star Showdown trophy.
It ended up being a very thrilling (and long) quarterfinal between Phil Galfond and Ben Tollerene for the last ticket to the semifinals. The two poker pros, who live in the same apartment building in Vancouver and know each other very well, battled it out for over 14-hours and 4,341 hands until a winner had been crowned: Phil Galfond. Galfond will now face Daniel "jungleman / w00ki3z" Cates on Saturday. It will be very interesting to see who wins that battle!
A total of 8 players entered PokerStars All-Star Showdown for $100,000 each. Three of four quarterfinals are now in the history books, and Ben Sulsky, Isaac Haxton and Daniel Cates are through to the semifinals.
Sulsky won his match against Tobias Kuder pretty easy (6 hours), Daniel "jungleman /w00ki3z" Cates eliminated the Swede Alexander "Sussie Smith" Roumeliotis after 9,5 hours of play, and it took PokerStars' recently signed Online Pro Isaac Haxton about 17 hours and more than 3,800 hands to defeat Alex "Kanu7" Millar. Tonight, Phil Galfond and Ben "Ben86" Tollerene will battle it out for the last seat in the semifinals. It will defiantly be a very tough and thrilling match. We will be back with an update tomorrow for the ones interested in how it went.
It seems like Antanas "Tony G" Gouga has no plans whatsoever to take it easy after the London 2012 Olympics, where he was the manager for the Lithuanian basketballl team, as he already has several new projects in the pipeline and some already up and running. However, the most interesting "project" must be the staking of Daniel "Jungleman12" Cates (live and online).
Scott Seiver is the 2012 PartyPoker Premier League V Champion. After a a short heads-up match against online super star Daniel "Jungleman12" Cates, Seiver had all the chips and received €500,000 and a ticket to the $25,000 World Poker Tour Championship. Cates received $300,000 for his second place finish.
Final table results: 1) Scott Seiver, $500 000 2) Daniel Cates, $300 000 3) Phil Laak, $175 000 4) Patrik Antonius, $125 000 5) Tony G, $100 000 6) Tom Dwan, $80 000 7) Matt Frankland, $65 000 8) Sam Trickett, $55 000
Last week we could read about the "poker prodigy" José "Girah" Macedo, 18, and how he tricked people into playing poker against "the extremely bad player sauron1989", at the same time he "gave advice" to the players in question on Skype while he got to see their hands.
It didn't take long before people found out that is was in fact José Macedo who used the account and as a consequence of this Macedo lost his sponsorship deal. This was the second time Macedo was involved in a cheating scandal. However, first time he only let another player use his account in order to win a ranking competition.
Lots of interesting rumors are circulating on the web right now. However, one of the most interesting ones is that Daniel "jungleman12" Cates has outstanding six million dollars stuck on his Full Tilt Poker account, and that he sold all of it to Tom "durrrr" Dwan after Black Friday. Danny "d2themfi" Isaacson was the one who reveled the information last Friday on one of the biggest poker forums online.
"When we had dinner with Daniel 'jungleman12' Cates and Haseeb 'INTERNETPOKERS' Qureshi in Austin in late April right after Black Friday, Cates said that he had sold his Full Tilt Poker account balance (I believe for 85% but i can't remember). We then asked him if he sold it to Tom 'durrrr' Dwan, and his response was (paraphrasing) 'Someone like that', and we left it at that." Isaacson tells.
It's not only poker companies that are leaving the U.S. market after Black Friday, also many online pros have decided to leave the country. Brian Hastings, who won $4 million against Viktor "Isildur1" Blom in a single session in December 2009, is one of these players. In Hastings blog, one can read that he's getting more and more into live poker but that he still wants to make a short-term move Canada in order to play some high stakes poker online.
Professional poker players are known to gamble for lots of money, and it's not only poker and sports betting they love to bet on. Daniel Cates, 2010's biggest winner online, recently said in an interview that he betted $25,000 to the odds 1/4 in a game of Angry Birds against his close friend Ashton Griffins. Even though a lot of money was at stake, the only rule was that the one who accumulated most points on the first map would take home the money. However, the prop bet could not be completed since Cates's iPhone broke down.
"I lost because my iPhone stopped working during the game. So I ended up losing all my points and was forced to pay Griffin some money to cancel the prop bet," said Cates in the interview.
In a recent interview, Daniel "jungleman12" Cates, 21, tells the story about the tough time 3 years ago when he had to work at McDonalds to finance his poker and how he turned around the negative trend and became one of the world's best poker players. Cates also reveals 2 players he's afraid of playing No Limit Hold'em against.
Even though the end of last week's high stakes games fell into the shadows of the news that F.B.I. closed down PokerStars, Full Tilt and Absolute Poker in the US, there were still some quite interesting high stake games running at Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars.
Gus Hansen, the Danish Full Tilt Pro, is one of the players we could thank that for! Even though it must have been a very stressful week for him as a part owner in Full Tilt Poker, he still managed to keep a cool head and play his very best game. At the end of the week, Gus had won almost $1,4 million in just about 10,000 hands and was by far the biggest winner online.
The Englishman Luke Schwartz is well-known troublemaker in the poker world. For example, he has been banned from several casinos due to misbehavior and stealing. However, there hasn't been much talk about him lately and it almost seemed like his character had changed for the better for a while. Well, that was until a few days ago when he once again got himself into trouble after personal attacks on Daniel "jungleman12" Cates.
It ended up being a very interesting week at Full Tilt and Poker Stars high stakes tables last week. Most of the online world's biggest stars were playing and it seemed like there were interesting games going around the clock.
2010's biggest winner online, Daniel "jungleman12" Cates, dominated last week's games. With a $8977,550 win he doubled his results this year and now he's the 3rd most successful player this year. Only Gus Hansen and Matt Hawrilenko have won more.
2010's biggest winner online, Daniel "Jungleman12" Cates, had a rough week at PokerStars and Full Tilt's poker tables last week. At Full Tilt Poker he lost $443,00 (only Also11 lost more -$450k) and at PokerStars about $50,000 in thrilling heads-up match (SuperStar Showdown) against Viktor "Isildur1" Blom.
The Danish poker pro Gus Hansen, who was one of 2010's biggest losers online, ended up being last week's biggest winner online. Gus managed to win not less than $650k in just about 1200 hands. It will be interesting to see if he can keep up the good game this week as well.
2 weeks have now passed on the new year and it looks like it might might be a very good year when it comes to high stakes games online - even though so many big names in the poker world have been busy playing different live tournaments such as PCA etc.
Someone that has been running extremely good so far is Di "Urindanger" Dang. He has been playing lots of hands and it seems like he's waiting for new opponents 24/7 at Full Tilt Poker. Dang has won almost $1.1 million dollars so far and it seems like the poker gods are siding with him in many of the bigger pots. Well, he's a great player and it's not only about luck!
Another session, as a part of the durrrr challenge, between Tom "durrrr" Dwan and Daniel "Jungleman12" Cates was played the other day at Full Tilt. The session (15) lasted for about 6 hours and they manage to play 2900 hands, which means that more than 17,000 of 50,000 hands have been played.
Anyhow, it was Daniel Cates, the biggest winner online last year, who dominated this session and took $318,000 from Tom Dwan. This means that Daniel Cates increased his lead to $819,213.
After summarizing 2010's high stakes games online, we have completed a list over 2010's most successful poker players at Full Tilt Poker. It really ended up being the year of the "newcomers" - Daniel "Jungleman12" Cates grabbed the first place with over $5.5 million won and Andreas "Skjervoy" Torbergsen ended up in second place with almost $3,8 million.
As it goes for Brian Townsend, who was a big winner 2009, he ended up losing the most 2010. Townsend was losing almost every single month and for a long time "the battle" for the not-so-glamorous first place on 2010's biggest loser list was between him and the Finnish poker star Ilari "Ziigmund" Sahamies. However, Townsend ended up losing $4 million dollars and Ziigmund about $2 millions.
After a kind of quiet week at Full Tilt's nosebleed tables, we think it's about time to summarize 2010's high stakes results. The 2 biggest winners this year are, not really a big surprise, Tom "durrrr" Dwan and Daniel "jungleman12" Cates. Both Dwan and Cates have won over $4 million dollars each and, at the moment, it looks like their winning streaks aren't over yet. Other big winners this year are Phil ivey (+$3m), Andreas "skjervoy" Torbergsen (+$2,5m) and LokoIsback (+$2,44m).
Gus Hansen's nightmare at the poker tables online never seems to end. He has been one of the poker players who have lost the most money ever single week/month this year. Last month, for example, he ended up losing 2.8 milion dollars and took home the first spot in the list of August biggest losers online.
I must admit that he has been very unlucky as well. But still - a big poker star like Gus Hansen shouldn't lose this much money ever month. He must take a good luck at his own game and try to find out what he's doing wrong. Maybe the best thing for Gus would be to play a bit lower stakes for now? Well, somehow I doubt that he will do that, at the same time as I hope he will start winning soon again. We can not afford to lose a player like Gus Hansen from the high stakes scene.
The new durrrr challenge between Tom "durrr" Dwan and Daniel "Jungleman12" Cates has been running for a few days now. Even though they only have played 2 sessions of No Limit Holdem so far, Jungleman12 already has taken the lead with almost $700,000!
According to Full Tilt Poker's blog, Dan Cates has won 61% of all pots and has a VPIP (Voluntarily Put Money into the Pot) of 69%. Dwan's VPIP is slightly lower at 65% and Cates has a win rate of about 25 BB/100.
Jungleman12 and URnotINdanger2 are the nicknames of two of the most successful and active poker players at Full Tilt Poker at the moment. Even though they have been in the spotlight for almost a year now, they have decided not to reveal their real names. There have been many people who have tried to figure it out though, but nothing has ever been confirmed - until now!
Thanks to some investigations done by people working for one of the poker world's leading magazines, we can now tell you who they are...
The most expensive tournament in World Poker Tour history will be played at the WPT National Philippines in January 2016. The tournament will have a buy-in of $200,000 and, according to WPT.com, some of the biggest names in poker have already confirmed that they will be taking part.
The second (of three) Day 1 flight drew a field of 173 players (10 less than Day 1a), and approximately 91 remained after seven 90-minute levels of poker. Ian Wassell finished the day at the top of the chip counts with 229,500.
Main Event
The final match between Daniel "jungleman / w00ki3z" Cates and Ben "Sauce123" Sulsky took 3,179 hands (about 10 hours) to complete. Cates dominated most of the match with his aggressive and creative style of playing heads-up poker. Sulsky only made a short comeback about 8 hours into the match, but Cates proved too strong for him to handle.
A total of 8 players entered PokerStars All-Star Showdown for $100,000 each. Three of four quarterfinals are now in the history books, and Ben Sulsky, Isaac Haxton and Daniel Cates are through to the semifinals. 
