As it is widely known, the majority of the US poker pros continued to play abroad after the Black Friday. Most of them moved to Canada, Mexico or the United Kingdom, but many chose more exotic locations as their new home, while others keep moving, spending only months in a specific country.
Apparently, Hungary is a popular destination among pros; in October 2012 we have already presented the five high stakes pros from the US living and grinding in Budapest. One of them was Michael 'mrw8419' Weisbrod, who won a WCOOP title, beating a field of 8,226 at the 2012 online world championship Event #21 - $215 NLHE for $164,619.
The Rakerace.com Team met yet another high stakes pro visiting Budapest, this time around a much better known player, none other than Daniel 'jungleman12' Cates. Cates was the biggest online cash game winner of 2010, he profited $5,503,296 in 145,212 hands. According to HSDB, his total online cash game winnings is currently $8,015,225 (341,646 hands) on Full Tilt and $530,881 (155,407 hands) on PokerStars. In 2014, he is on an insane heater, and not only in cash games, but in HUSNG as well, he is currently the leader of the 2014 Sharkscope profit leaderboard.
You can watch our exclusive interview below, where Cates talks about his Budapest experiences, the start of his career, the Macedo scandal, today's high stakes 27 triple draw games, and even about the possibility of a jungleman12 challenge to replace the idle durrrr challenge.
Exclusive jungleman12 interview:
An excerpt of the video can be read below:
Hi Daniel, let me first of all thank you for accepting our invitation to do this interview. Let us start at your childhood. You were introverted as a child, didn’t participate in a lot of activities with your schoolmates. Was this your decision? Did you prefer being alone a lot, couldn’t you get along with your peers, or was it something else? What are your memories from this period?
When I was younger, I wasn’t actually, even now actually, introverted. I prefer spending time alone to spending time with people in general. It’s always more of a spectrum thing. Every person wants some time alone and some time with people, it’s not completely black or white in that sense. And, when I was younger, there was a mix of things. There was that, there was a big one, I didn’t really know how to interact with people, so to speak... It just didn’t happen naturally for me as it did with other people. And I didn’t quite have the same interests, which is related to not being that natural. I worked on that, in addition, like, some of that happens naturally as well as you go out and do more things. You also meet other people who share your interests. To some extent, the solution is natural as well.
Computer games have become a passion for you and you had a talent for them. I recall you became the best Command & Conquer player by the time you were 15. What did these games mean to you?
Well I wasn’t really the best but I was one of the best ones. It was just fun for me to play. This strategy game was cool, like partly for the reason, to do cool things with them. I just thought playing games were fun, and... I liked the competition as well. I don’t know what else to say. It didn’t mean much to me, I mean they were a lot of fun for me, they were a large source of enjoyment, that was their meaning.
I think they certainly helped me at poker in a few ways, though. Firstly, by playing these games I became more aware, my awareness of the necessary things was increased greatly. As an example, if you play basketball it will probably help you with similar sports like soccer, because your brain will be better at making you act in the right ways. It’s essentially what I’m saying but with regards to – the comparison being that I played RTS games there are some crossover with poker. There are also some similarities between RTS games and poker, for example, in an RTS game, there’s a point where, once there’s a lot of stiff competition and it’d be very difficult to win a high% of the time but so what you do is you do the strategy that’ll work most of the time or has the best overall thing, the best overall EV, whatever you want to call it. EV in terms of wins. So, that sums it well how to think strategically. Well, a bit of a poker kind of strategically. That’s one way of looking at it.
Another way is that in the process of learning I actually realised a few things that were necessary to learn poker faster and this helped me. One error that I made and seriously impeded me was I didn’t put enough effort into seeing what other people were doing and looking at things from outside perspectives that were not ones that I got. I was thinking what I was really stumbling upon, basically I just looked at what other people were doing. I looked elsewhere to see what other people were doing to see what were working for them, and try things that they did. A lot of that’s really a necessary in poker for improvement, and certainly an experiment in learning.
Tell us about the beginnings of your online career. How much did you deposit, what kind of games did you play? How much time did it take for you to improve, build a bankroll and make it to the highest stakes?
My online career began when I lost a lot of money live, playing $0.50/$1 games and $1/$2 games. I didn’t realize that I could play online for a long time but once I did, I decided “hey, why don’t I lose my money there” in $5 rather than $10 games. So I start playing those and trying to learn and got sick of losing hundreds of dollars at a time and there are some suspicions that there’s cheating going on in these games, which was more or less true actually. So I just put in line working on my game and actually, within like two weeks or so it seemed that I was winning. Then I busted my account a couple of times and I deposit $70 I didn’t realize I had ‘cause it was a banking error or whatever and, from there, I just kept winning.
You appeared in the high stakes games at Full Tilt Poker in 2009 but you lost around 450,000 dollars. Next year, you became one of the superstars of poker, crushing your opponents and winning 5.5 million as the largest cash game winner of 2010. The Durrrr Challenge started and your reputation increased even more, as you dominated one of the most recognised players and won 1.2 million from him in about 20,000 hands. How could you improve so much in just one year? How do you remember your 2010 season?
Well, I didn’t really improve, I mean, I did improve quite a bit but I was already a winning player. People didn’t know that I made a lot of money in 2009 as well. I was getting there. I mean, basically what is happening to the poker world is there is like a perception of skill and there is also actual skill. In 2010, my actual skill and to how much it increased was greater than those whose perceived skill was greater than those whose actual skill was in reality but whose perceived skill was higher. Therefore, because they thought they had an edge, and because they had not yet ripped, because they not yet paid for, were not keeping up with the times, I won quite a lot of money from guys who were battling in softer games. There was this high stakes bubble where all these guys weren’t really improving because they had so much money that they didn’t play. All these guys were battling at $50/$100, $25/$50 or whatever. All these guys were improving this whole time, and struggling to get to the top and I just one of those guys who happened to get there first and just burst their bubble basically so to speak, by being actually better than and running hot enough to take their money, that makes sense. So, basically I won a lot of money off guys who fell behind the curve.
In 2009-2010, I thought the best player was me, but of course, I’ll take that. I thought that Viktor gave me quite a lot of trouble, I didn’t want to play with him especially high. I thought Ike Haxton was really good also, I felt like I had an edge against him for a couple of reasons, but, he did win a little bit of money from me, not a whole lot. The one that won the most from me at No Limit was Viktor for sure. It’s hard to say how much he won for a couple of reasons, but I always thought his ability to adapt was better than other players, his ability of knowing what I was doing, that sort of thing was certainly better than other players. And he is like one of the few players that doesn’t use tracking or any such things to benefit. He has a lot of natural skill in poker in general I’d say, perhaps even one of the most.
You’ve had your share of negative impact in your poker career, some people have abused your trust and empathy. How did it make you feel to be attacked for just one mistake when you had been a victim yourself before?
I felt that it wasn’t fair, largely, because I think more so than most people, I’m more likely to spike(?) myself for the sake of what I think is fair. Certainly, historically that is true, the more and more I’ve dealt with poker, the more I’ve recognized that I should probably push my edges as far as it goes before it gets into being unethical, because, if you don’t then you essentially get freerolled. Someone various dude said to me recently “If you’re held to higher standards than the other guy or if you hold yourself to higher standards than the other guy, you’re gonna get screwed over”, which is true. I’m trying to think of examples. You also have to consider the possibility of being freerolled. So, basically, you really have to decide where the ethical lines are, and ummm, and to what extent it’s fair to push your edge. Well, that’s the same thing, I guess. Tthere is an area where it’s not exactly clear… or it’s like somewhat clear, and it can be like a little bit difficult of an area, if you know what I mean. You have to certainly seriously consider that. These days it’s really annoying when I get screwed over by people, because, I’ve like done a deal where I just lent too much info for them to freeroll me. Like the durrrr challenge for example I’m basically getting shafted by everyone in this thing. Yeah, I just get completely shafted by that.
You played against the toughest opponents, including Phil Ivey, Patrik Antonius and Viktor Blom. Was there anyone you feared or you felt you had an edge on all of them? Who do you think was the best player at the time?
I couldn’t name them definitively, I can give some names that I think are very good. These days, WCGRider is obviously one of the best no limit players these days, I think Ike’s really good, actually thought Sauce was really good as well. Let’s see, Niklas when he played was good, I think he is a really good player and he is doing really well in poker in general actually. He is probably really good at whatever he plays if he plays it long enough. Who else? I thought Kanu was pretty good. I didn’t like some things with his strategy but he is good. Let’s see, in PLO, well, Phil crushed me so there’s that. Who else? Bttech is probably one of the better PLO players, he certainly thinks he is one of the best. Isildur has historically crushed me at PLO high stakes, I’m sure he was running hot but he’s crushed me. Who else? And then… “And in 2-7?” No comment.
After becoming a successful player, you moved in with Ashton Griffin and Haseeb Qureshi. Tell us a bit about this poker apartment! How did you find each other, where did you live? Are there any memorable stories to share?
My incentives have changed a number of times over the course, over the period. I did do that for quite some time. I think I had some success. These days, I somewhat question the effectiveness of self-development in general. Not the movement, not the point, not the idea of self-development, I think that’s a very good idea, but the self-development movement I think is not perfect, if you know what I mean. There’s a lot of inefficiency there. I think, lately my interests have kind of shifted again towards poker because I left a lot of money on the table in 2011 so I’ve become more passionate with that and I think my spirituality or my self-development suffered in some ways, actually. It’s an area which I should focus on again, at least to some extent, in the same sense that some of those who are working out a ton should do something to not lose what they had, in that sense I should do like, actually I should put a little more effort into that, in short.
Who are your best friends you absolutely trust? Who are those you have been close to but let you down?
My best friends? Well, Doug was my best friend, or one of my best friends, WCGRider, but things have changed since then. Let’s see, I’ve been good friends with like Johannes Strassmann, a German player, Max Altergott, another player. Another guy named Don that most people, I mean some people know of but most people’ll know who is involved with the poker world, he is a good friend of mine as well. Let’s see, a dozen people who I’ve been hanging out with lately quite a bit. Like, Max’s girlfriend, now he is doing his own thing quite often. Um, trying to think… I’d feel bad if I forget someone. Let’s see… They’re gonna hit me up and say, “thought we are cool?”! You know, Ashton’s been a friend for a long time, Justin Smith’s been a good friend, too, um, let’s see, I’m friendly with a number of other guys but they’re not the best friends, exactly. I’m friends with Antonio also, I wouldn’t say we are best friends exactly but he is a good friend as well.
It looks like the tough times after Black Friday are over for you. You have received your bankroll that was stuck on FTP, the poker community has forgiven you, and you were the biggest high stakes winner in March. It was interesting to see you play on 2-7 Triple Draw tables. What is the reason for that? Do you not get action in other games? How sharp do you consider your Triple Draw game?
I’m playing the deuce game because it’s one of the biggest games that runs. That’s one of the reasons why, because I get no action, almost virtually no action from the limit other than Ike and WCGRider and fucking asianflushie.
How big of an edge do you think you have on the current high stakes line-up? Do you think you can dominate again like in 2010?
Not quite in 2010. Well, maybe… But I think I could potentially have a similar year but maybe I’m more subject to variance, I think, these days. In No Limit before, the edges were bigger and people were doing like much more incorrectly than these days. Really, in a limit game, that’s really gonna be the case, where in a PLO game, I mean, in PLO it’s not exactly gonna be the case, there’s a ton of variance and stuff. Erm, it won’t be as easy, but let’s do well.
Have you ever played in the famous Macau games? If yes, how were the results? Are the games really that soft? Do you plan on playing there in the future?
Sort of. I have played in a $2,000/$4,000… Was it $2,000/$4,000? It was either $1k/$2k or $2k… no, it was $2k/$4k no limit game in Las Vegas, with some of the Macau guys. It wasn’t like the straight-up Macau game exactly. It’s more of a political thing to get into that game. I played in Macau, I played some Chinese poker or whatever with them. Just tried to get some action at poker but it didn’t really work out. Yeah, I won in Vegas, I wanted to play more, but it’s just not that simple.
Speaking of Macau, the most famous of their regulars right now is durrrr, who seems to almost live there. Are there any updates to the durrrr challenge? Does he still pay you the "fine" for not playing? What chance do you think you have to ever finish it? Would it even excite poker fans anymore? The public opinion of durrrr has been getting worse and worse since he is always in Macau and even got his Full Tilt sponsorship terminated.
I think that Tom means well, whatever that means with regards the challenge. I’ve tried very hard to cooperate with him and still am trying and I sincerely hope that he can follow through on his part of the challenge but my faith in him actually doing something is diminishing. I think that he needs to do something, to put in more of an effort or to resolve the situation or whatever his problem is. I’ve been waiting for years for him to get his shit together and play the hands that he promised to play me and fulfil the promises that he said that he’ll do and he has constantly failed to do any of those things.
Have you ever considered offering a "Jungleman Challenge"? I am sure the whole community would get excited seeing you battle Ike Haxton, Isildur or WCGRider.
Unfortunately, I think that to offer one similar to the durrrr challenge, in terms of offering 3 to 1 in 50,000 hands would not be profitable for me. People are becoming more and more competitive and there’s only so much that you can really even push in No Limit. Doug and I talked a little bit about doing such a thing, but, fingers crossed, maybe it’ll happen. No disrespect for him, he is a very good player, of course, maybe even the best at this point. I’d personally wanna do it against Isildur. Just because, you know, it’s kind of a long-standing rivalry between us, to some extent, in addition, right now I think I have an edge versus him. I don’t think it’s gonna happen, though, because of other reasons.
Will you play the WSOP this year? The One Drop event will be held again...
There’s a good chance for the One Drop, although, I’m not 100% about the One Drop yet. And I am certainly going to play the WSOP, there is a very good chance. I’ll be playing at least the high stakes games on the side, and some tournaments.
How do you improve your game? Do you watch coaching videos for example?
I do a mix of things to improve my game. Ultimately it comes down to a lot of different things. One thing that you need to know about me is that I improve subconsciously in a funny way. I improve by not doing anything, it’s strange, like I’ll just wake up and then just realize the solution to something I was thinking about one day. I’ve had a number of experiences like that when I, umm, I just realize things, put ideas into play. A lot of what I do is I guess I basically just run a lot of thought experiments in my head, which is obviously inferior to actually doing the math, if you do it properly at least, which I do to some extent as well. But that’s a lot of what I do. I also run simulations and look at stuff in PokerTracker, things like that. I’m just not real thrilled about doing it. For running simulations I have to sit there and figure out how to do it and stuff. I also talk with other people, I do a number of things basically. Practice is worth something as well.
Do you offer coaching? What is your hourly rate?
Right now I’m not offering coaching. If I was to charge something it would probably be around $2000 or more an hour.
What would Jungleman do, if he wouldn't play poker? Can you see yourself in any everyday job?
Depends on the context. Right now, I would probably be more thorough in figuring out how to get involved in business or investing or something like that. If I was in college and poker didn’t exist for some reason I would probably be a programmer, I think. It’s kind of fun, and I was majoring in computer science for a long time, and I kind of enjoyed it. And it’s essentially just problem solving, in many ways it’s actually similar to poker, and these days software are becoming relevant to poker in general.
Thank you for the interview!
Apparently, Hungary is a popular destination among pros; in October 2012 we have already presented the five high stakes pros from the US living and grinding in Budapest. One of them was Michael 'mrw8419' Weisbrod, who won a WCOOP title, beating a field of 8,226 at the 2012 online world championship Event #21 - $215 NLHE for $164,619.
The Rakerace.com Team met yet another high stakes pro visiting Budapest, this time around a much better known player, none other than Daniel 'jungleman12' Cates. Cates was the biggest online cash game winner of 2010, he profited $5,503,296 in 145,212 hands. According to HSDB, his total online cash game winnings is currently $8,015,225 (341,646 hands) on Full Tilt and $530,881 (155,407 hands) on PokerStars. In 2014, he is on an insane heater, and not only in cash games, but in HUSNG as well, he is currently the leader of the 2014 Sharkscope profit leaderboard.
You can watch our exclusive interview below, where Cates talks about his Budapest experiences, the start of his career, the Macedo scandal, today's high stakes 27 triple draw games, and even about the possibility of a jungleman12 challenge to replace the idle durrrr challenge.
Exclusive jungleman12 interview:
An excerpt of the video can be read below:
Hi Daniel, let me first of all thank you for accepting our invitation to do this interview. Let us start at your childhood. You were introverted as a child, didn’t participate in a lot of activities with your schoolmates. Was this your decision? Did you prefer being alone a lot, couldn’t you get along with your peers, or was it something else? What are your memories from this period?
When I was younger, I wasn’t actually, even now actually, introverted. I prefer spending time alone to spending time with people in general. It’s always more of a spectrum thing. Every person wants some time alone and some time with people, it’s not completely black or white in that sense. And, when I was younger, there was a mix of things. There was that, there was a big one, I didn’t really know how to interact with people, so to speak... It just didn’t happen naturally for me as it did with other people. And I didn’t quite have the same interests, which is related to not being that natural. I worked on that, in addition, like, some of that happens naturally as well as you go out and do more things. You also meet other people who share your interests. To some extent, the solution is natural as well.
Computer games have become a passion for you and you had a talent for them. I recall you became the best Command & Conquer player by the time you were 15. What did these games mean to you?
Well I wasn’t really the best but I was one of the best ones. It was just fun for me to play. This strategy game was cool, like partly for the reason, to do cool things with them. I just thought playing games were fun, and... I liked the competition as well. I don’t know what else to say. It didn’t mean much to me, I mean they were a lot of fun for me, they were a large source of enjoyment, that was their meaning.
I think they certainly helped me at poker in a few ways, though. Firstly, by playing these games I became more aware, my awareness of the necessary things was increased greatly. As an example, if you play basketball it will probably help you with similar sports like soccer, because your brain will be better at making you act in the right ways. It’s essentially what I’m saying but with regards to – the comparison being that I played RTS games there are some crossover with poker. There are also some similarities between RTS games and poker, for example, in an RTS game, there’s a point where, once there’s a lot of stiff competition and it’d be very difficult to win a high% of the time but so what you do is you do the strategy that’ll work most of the time or has the best overall thing, the best overall EV, whatever you want to call it. EV in terms of wins. So, that sums it well how to think strategically. Well, a bit of a poker kind of strategically. That’s one way of looking at it.
Another way is that in the process of learning I actually realised a few things that were necessary to learn poker faster and this helped me. One error that I made and seriously impeded me was I didn’t put enough effort into seeing what other people were doing and looking at things from outside perspectives that were not ones that I got. I was thinking what I was really stumbling upon, basically I just looked at what other people were doing. I looked elsewhere to see what other people were doing to see what were working for them, and try things that they did. A lot of that’s really a necessary in poker for improvement, and certainly an experiment in learning.
Tell us about the beginnings of your online career. How much did you deposit, what kind of games did you play? How much time did it take for you to improve, build a bankroll and make it to the highest stakes?
My online career began when I lost a lot of money live, playing $0.50/$1 games and $1/$2 games. I didn’t realize that I could play online for a long time but once I did, I decided “hey, why don’t I lose my money there” in $5 rather than $10 games. So I start playing those and trying to learn and got sick of losing hundreds of dollars at a time and there are some suspicions that there’s cheating going on in these games, which was more or less true actually. So I just put in line working on my game and actually, within like two weeks or so it seemed that I was winning. Then I busted my account a couple of times and I deposit $70 I didn’t realize I had ‘cause it was a banking error or whatever and, from there, I just kept winning.
You appeared in the high stakes games at Full Tilt Poker in 2009 but you lost around 450,000 dollars. Next year, you became one of the superstars of poker, crushing your opponents and winning 5.5 million as the largest cash game winner of 2010. The Durrrr Challenge started and your reputation increased even more, as you dominated one of the most recognised players and won 1.2 million from him in about 20,000 hands. How could you improve so much in just one year? How do you remember your 2010 season?
Well, I didn’t really improve, I mean, I did improve quite a bit but I was already a winning player. People didn’t know that I made a lot of money in 2009 as well. I was getting there. I mean, basically what is happening to the poker world is there is like a perception of skill and there is also actual skill. In 2010, my actual skill and to how much it increased was greater than those whose perceived skill was greater than those whose actual skill was in reality but whose perceived skill was higher. Therefore, because they thought they had an edge, and because they had not yet ripped, because they not yet paid for, were not keeping up with the times, I won quite a lot of money from guys who were battling in softer games. There was this high stakes bubble where all these guys weren’t really improving because they had so much money that they didn’t play. All these guys were battling at $50/$100, $25/$50 or whatever. All these guys were improving this whole time, and struggling to get to the top and I just one of those guys who happened to get there first and just burst their bubble basically so to speak, by being actually better than and running hot enough to take their money, that makes sense. So, basically I won a lot of money off guys who fell behind the curve.
In 2009-2010, I thought the best player was me, but of course, I’ll take that. I thought that Viktor gave me quite a lot of trouble, I didn’t want to play with him especially high. I thought Ike Haxton was really good also, I felt like I had an edge against him for a couple of reasons, but, he did win a little bit of money from me, not a whole lot. The one that won the most from me at No Limit was Viktor for sure. It’s hard to say how much he won for a couple of reasons, but I always thought his ability to adapt was better than other players, his ability of knowing what I was doing, that sort of thing was certainly better than other players. And he is like one of the few players that doesn’t use tracking or any such things to benefit. He has a lot of natural skill in poker in general I’d say, perhaps even one of the most.
You’ve had your share of negative impact in your poker career, some people have abused your trust and empathy. How did it make you feel to be attacked for just one mistake when you had been a victim yourself before?
I felt that it wasn’t fair, largely, because I think more so than most people, I’m more likely to spike(?) myself for the sake of what I think is fair. Certainly, historically that is true, the more and more I’ve dealt with poker, the more I’ve recognized that I should probably push my edges as far as it goes before it gets into being unethical, because, if you don’t then you essentially get freerolled. Someone various dude said to me recently “If you’re held to higher standards than the other guy or if you hold yourself to higher standards than the other guy, you’re gonna get screwed over”, which is true. I’m trying to think of examples. You also have to consider the possibility of being freerolled. So, basically, you really have to decide where the ethical lines are, and ummm, and to what extent it’s fair to push your edge. Well, that’s the same thing, I guess. Tthere is an area where it’s not exactly clear… or it’s like somewhat clear, and it can be like a little bit difficult of an area, if you know what I mean. You have to certainly seriously consider that. These days it’s really annoying when I get screwed over by people, because, I’ve like done a deal where I just lent too much info for them to freeroll me. Like the durrrr challenge for example I’m basically getting shafted by everyone in this thing. Yeah, I just get completely shafted by that.
You played against the toughest opponents, including Phil Ivey, Patrik Antonius and Viktor Blom. Was there anyone you feared or you felt you had an edge on all of them? Who do you think was the best player at the time?
I couldn’t name them definitively, I can give some names that I think are very good. These days, WCGRider is obviously one of the best no limit players these days, I think Ike’s really good, actually thought Sauce was really good as well. Let’s see, Niklas when he played was good, I think he is a really good player and he is doing really well in poker in general actually. He is probably really good at whatever he plays if he plays it long enough. Who else? I thought Kanu was pretty good. I didn’t like some things with his strategy but he is good. Let’s see, in PLO, well, Phil crushed me so there’s that. Who else? Bttech is probably one of the better PLO players, he certainly thinks he is one of the best. Isildur has historically crushed me at PLO high stakes, I’m sure he was running hot but he’s crushed me. Who else? And then… “And in 2-7?” No comment.
After becoming a successful player, you moved in with Ashton Griffin and Haseeb Qureshi. Tell us a bit about this poker apartment! How did you find each other, where did you live? Are there any memorable stories to share?
My incentives have changed a number of times over the course, over the period. I did do that for quite some time. I think I had some success. These days, I somewhat question the effectiveness of self-development in general. Not the movement, not the point, not the idea of self-development, I think that’s a very good idea, but the self-development movement I think is not perfect, if you know what I mean. There’s a lot of inefficiency there. I think, lately my interests have kind of shifted again towards poker because I left a lot of money on the table in 2011 so I’ve become more passionate with that and I think my spirituality or my self-development suffered in some ways, actually. It’s an area which I should focus on again, at least to some extent, in the same sense that some of those who are working out a ton should do something to not lose what they had, in that sense I should do like, actually I should put a little more effort into that, in short.
Who are your best friends you absolutely trust? Who are those you have been close to but let you down?
My best friends? Well, Doug was my best friend, or one of my best friends, WCGRider, but things have changed since then. Let’s see, I’ve been good friends with like Johannes Strassmann, a German player, Max Altergott, another player. Another guy named Don that most people, I mean some people know of but most people’ll know who is involved with the poker world, he is a good friend of mine as well. Let’s see, a dozen people who I’ve been hanging out with lately quite a bit. Like, Max’s girlfriend, now he is doing his own thing quite often. Um, trying to think… I’d feel bad if I forget someone. Let’s see… They’re gonna hit me up and say, “thought we are cool?”! You know, Ashton’s been a friend for a long time, Justin Smith’s been a good friend, too, um, let’s see, I’m friendly with a number of other guys but they’re not the best friends, exactly. I’m friends with Antonio also, I wouldn’t say we are best friends exactly but he is a good friend as well.
It looks like the tough times after Black Friday are over for you. You have received your bankroll that was stuck on FTP, the poker community has forgiven you, and you were the biggest high stakes winner in March. It was interesting to see you play on 2-7 Triple Draw tables. What is the reason for that? Do you not get action in other games? How sharp do you consider your Triple Draw game?
I’m playing the deuce game because it’s one of the biggest games that runs. That’s one of the reasons why, because I get no action, almost virtually no action from the limit other than Ike and WCGRider and fucking asianflushie.
How big of an edge do you think you have on the current high stakes line-up? Do you think you can dominate again like in 2010?
Not quite in 2010. Well, maybe… But I think I could potentially have a similar year but maybe I’m more subject to variance, I think, these days. In No Limit before, the edges were bigger and people were doing like much more incorrectly than these days. Really, in a limit game, that’s really gonna be the case, where in a PLO game, I mean, in PLO it’s not exactly gonna be the case, there’s a ton of variance and stuff. Erm, it won’t be as easy, but let’s do well.
Have you ever played in the famous Macau games? If yes, how were the results? Are the games really that soft? Do you plan on playing there in the future?
Sort of. I have played in a $2,000/$4,000… Was it $2,000/$4,000? It was either $1k/$2k or $2k… no, it was $2k/$4k no limit game in Las Vegas, with some of the Macau guys. It wasn’t like the straight-up Macau game exactly. It’s more of a political thing to get into that game. I played in Macau, I played some Chinese poker or whatever with them. Just tried to get some action at poker but it didn’t really work out. Yeah, I won in Vegas, I wanted to play more, but it’s just not that simple.
Speaking of Macau, the most famous of their regulars right now is durrrr, who seems to almost live there. Are there any updates to the durrrr challenge? Does he still pay you the "fine" for not playing? What chance do you think you have to ever finish it? Would it even excite poker fans anymore? The public opinion of durrrr has been getting worse and worse since he is always in Macau and even got his Full Tilt sponsorship terminated.
I think that Tom means well, whatever that means with regards the challenge. I’ve tried very hard to cooperate with him and still am trying and I sincerely hope that he can follow through on his part of the challenge but my faith in him actually doing something is diminishing. I think that he needs to do something, to put in more of an effort or to resolve the situation or whatever his problem is. I’ve been waiting for years for him to get his shit together and play the hands that he promised to play me and fulfil the promises that he said that he’ll do and he has constantly failed to do any of those things.
Have you ever considered offering a "Jungleman Challenge"? I am sure the whole community would get excited seeing you battle Ike Haxton, Isildur or WCGRider.
Unfortunately, I think that to offer one similar to the durrrr challenge, in terms of offering 3 to 1 in 50,000 hands would not be profitable for me. People are becoming more and more competitive and there’s only so much that you can really even push in No Limit. Doug and I talked a little bit about doing such a thing, but, fingers crossed, maybe it’ll happen. No disrespect for him, he is a very good player, of course, maybe even the best at this point. I’d personally wanna do it against Isildur. Just because, you know, it’s kind of a long-standing rivalry between us, to some extent, in addition, right now I think I have an edge versus him. I don’t think it’s gonna happen, though, because of other reasons.
Will you play the WSOP this year? The One Drop event will be held again...
There’s a good chance for the One Drop, although, I’m not 100% about the One Drop yet. And I am certainly going to play the WSOP, there is a very good chance. I’ll be playing at least the high stakes games on the side, and some tournaments.
How do you improve your game? Do you watch coaching videos for example?
I do a mix of things to improve my game. Ultimately it comes down to a lot of different things. One thing that you need to know about me is that I improve subconsciously in a funny way. I improve by not doing anything, it’s strange, like I’ll just wake up and then just realize the solution to something I was thinking about one day. I’ve had a number of experiences like that when I, umm, I just realize things, put ideas into play. A lot of what I do is I guess I basically just run a lot of thought experiments in my head, which is obviously inferior to actually doing the math, if you do it properly at least, which I do to some extent as well. But that’s a lot of what I do. I also run simulations and look at stuff in PokerTracker, things like that. I’m just not real thrilled about doing it. For running simulations I have to sit there and figure out how to do it and stuff. I also talk with other people, I do a number of things basically. Practice is worth something as well.
Do you offer coaching? What is your hourly rate?
Right now I’m not offering coaching. If I was to charge something it would probably be around $2000 or more an hour.
What would Jungleman do, if he wouldn't play poker? Can you see yourself in any everyday job?
Depends on the context. Right now, I would probably be more thorough in figuring out how to get involved in business or investing or something like that. If I was in college and poker didn’t exist for some reason I would probably be a programmer, I think. It’s kind of fun, and I was majoring in computer science for a long time, and I kind of enjoyed it. And it’s essentially just problem solving, in many ways it’s actually similar to poker, and these days software are becoming relevant to poker in general.
Thank you for the interview!
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