Daniel Cates aka "jungleman12"

This website is an unofficial fan site for Daniel Cates, also known as jungleman12. But who is Dan Cates?

Many people do not know the name Daniel Cates as he only recently raised to celebrity status. But if you play online poker, you probably heard of his success on the online poker scene. Even in poker jungleman12 is very specialized as he mostly play online poker ring games. So online or live tournament players might not know him either.

To cut the chase, the reason why Daniel Cates is rapidly appearing on the poker radard screens is that he was the most profitable online poker in 2010, winning about $5.5 millions. 2011 started well too. And not just that. Dan really wants to prove to the world that he is the best, so he does not focus on finding big whales to play with, on the contrary he loves to play against the best players at Full Tilt Poker, such as Phil Ivey, Patrik Antonius or Tom 'durrrr' Dwan. He also plays at pokerstars, challenging players such as Isildur1.

In this vein Dan 'jungleman12' Cates is no other than the second contenter in the famous 'Durrrr challenges', the first being Patrik Antonius. In these matches of multi-table online poker ring games of Texas Holdem or Omaha High, the player victorious after 50,000 played hands receives a prize of $1.5 million in addition to his profits. But if Tom Dwan wins, he only gets $500k. In his usual bravado defied all poker players in this very unfavorable (to him) competition, and jungleman12 is currently playing the second one. But it takes months to complete.

Daniel Cates only started playing online poker a few years ago, but his rise has been meteoritical. He routinetely plays Phil Ivey, considered the best player in the world, and he is barely 20 years old and used to work at a McDonald's a while back.

Dan 'jungleman12' Cates is a heads-up ring game specialist, this being considered the purest form of poker, as you are constantly playing hands and playing them versus the same opponnent, forcing you to be active and aggressive; waiting for good cards does not work in heads-up as you may have to wait until your stack is gone, while in a full ring game playing patiently a tight-aggressive game may be a profitable strategy but without necessarily reflecting raw poker talent.

So let's see how 2011 is shaping up for the online poker prodigy.

You can also read more about Daniel's best hands.