Dan ‘jungleman12’ Cates

Over the last 12 months Dan ‘jungleman12’ Cates managed to make more profits than any other poker player despite it being a relatively hard year for poker.

Dan “jungleman12” Cates, the high stakes online poker professional won more money than any other online player last year. Over the course of 2010 Cates managed to win $5 million from the tables at Full Tilt Poker. In one of his final marathon sessions of the year, Cates managed to win over $500,000 playing $300/$600 half no-limit Texas Hold’em/half pot-limit Omaha cash games.
Early during that session Cates lost around a quarter of a million dollars to his opponents who included the veteran poker professional, Patrik Antonius. However, it did not take long for Cates to rebound and he finished the session with double that much money in profits for a fantastic end to the year and securing his top spot as the highest earner of the year.
Another particularly successful part of Cates’ year was the “Durrrr Challenge” during which he managed to earn over $500,000 playing a number of heads-up no-limit Texas Hold’em matches against the young online poker genius Tom “durrr” Dwan. So far Cates and Dwan have played well over thirteen thousand hands of poker in the challenge; the overall winner of the challenge will be decided when they have played fifty thousand hands. Dwan wasn’t the only player to suffer at the hands of Cates; other big names who lost heavily include Ivey, Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies, Aaron “aejones” Jones, and Ashton “theASHMAN103″ Griffin.
Dwan is another of this year’s big winners; he has made profits of over $3.6 million. Dwan is in third place in the table behind Cates and Andreas ‘skjervoy’ Torbergsen who won $3.7 million over the past year. Also in the top five for 2010 is the poker superstar Phil Ivey who has made just over $3 million in profits.
For 2010 Cates had a phenomenal year with everyone’s profits down due to the global financial situation. However, his profits for this year are much lower than top money winners in the past. Last year Patrik Antonius made a massive $8.9 million playing poker online and in 2008 Phil Ivey was top of the list after securing profits of $7.3 million for the year.
Cates was reflecting on his rise to fame in his blog. He wrote that he hasn’t handled all of his failures appropriately, but he is lucky in so far as he has used these failures well and as not had very many large setbacks. He said that he has always dreamt of succeeding but did not expect the level of success he has had or for it to be achieved so quickly.