David Tuchman got to take Daniel "Jungleman" Cates for a ride recently as part of his YouTube interview series 888Ride.
Cates is one of tournament poker's top all-time money winners, a super high roller event regular, and a legend from the heyday of online poker. During their short drive together, Tuchman grilled Jungleman on some of his biggest wins, what he gets up to when he isn't playing poker, and how he hopes to change the poker community for the better.
Tuchman's chat with Cates begins with a review of his most recent WSOP bracelet wins. During the 2022 WSOP, Cates successfully defended his title in the $50,000 Players' Champion, winning the event in back-to-back years. Tuchman asked Cates what it was like winning one of the most important titles in poker twice in a row.
"It's pretty sweet," Cates replied, adding, "I think it's pretty appropriate I won this particular event. Because I've had to contemplate lately what is it that differentiates me from all the other poker players and what led to my success. And I do think that event highlights a lot of those things."
"I ended up learning a lot of the skills, being very versatile — [the Players' Championship] is very favorable to cash game players because the structure is so slow. If you're going for the win you mostly need to know cash game stuff and not ICM stuff. Where ICM stuff has been my weakness. I'm not one of the best no-limit hold'em tournament players, but overall I'm probably one of the best poker players."
Tuchman then asked him about where this confidence in his game comes from, citing an interview Cates did during a game where he was playing against Phil Ivey. Cates was asked what it was like to play against the best and responded, "You'd have to ask Phil."
"Poker is useful for self-growth," Cates replied. "To realize that you can actually take on the best and beat the best. That's very helpful for one's confidence. Poker is useful for that."
"Because of the fact that there is not 100 percent skill, it breaks down these limiting beliefs in a soft way by allowing people to sometimes succeed against the best and go 'maybe, I'm the best' or 'I can beat Phil Ivey' or whatever."
When the talk moved away from Cates's presence at the poker table, he became a bit more animated. When asked what he was doing in his free time, he replied, "I'm building a poker community."
"Because firstly, poker has a lot of benefits that do actually benefit society in a number of ways. Secondly, I'm already pretty invested in it, so my leverage goes quite far. So now I can make a positive difference within it and hopefully make the game better for everybody."
Beyond that, he hopes that his community efforts will gain him some new skills. "[Building a poker community] would provide me with the right experiences to do harder things, such as become a proper business founder," he explained.
The conversation moved on to other topics including his thoughts on the current state of the WSOP ("Poker's still tough, but there's still a load of money to be made if someone really applies themselves") but in the end it all came back to Cates's plans for the community.
Summing up in the final moments of the interview, as Tuchman bid Cates good luck with his goals and Cates responded, "Well, I'm going for parabolic positive change. That's the goal!"
The full interview is fairly short at just over ten minutes long. To watch the full interview — including a breakdown of Cates's unusual diet and his theory of automotive merit — just click the video below.
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