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The second installment of the Tom Dwan Million Dollar Challenge has kicked off and his opponent is Daniel Cates screen name jungleman12. Cates has been playing online only a couple of years, but he has amassed a reputation that has put him squarely in the sights of the top pros. Let’s take a look at this rising superstar.

Dan Cates Photo Image

Dan Cates started playing poker back in his high school days, which was just a mere three years ago. Around 2007, he was playing in high school games and was regularly winning in them. He then tried to move into playing local cash games at .50-$1 and $1 – $2 and found himself losing around $3,000 over the summer of 2007. While this seems like a small amount of money for someone that now plays high stakes, it should be pointed out that Cates was working at McDonalds during this point of his life.

Read More about real name Daniel Cates screen name Jungleman12 here

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Sorry for the delay, I was covering Durrrr Vs Jungleman12…..

Day 2
On Day 2 of the Full Tilt Poker Merit Cyprus Classic Main Event, Manig Loeser finished with the big stack at 337,000 chips. Other players over 200,000 chips at the end of the day included Chris Karagulleyan, Kerem Kiyak, Zsolt Vasvenszki, Bruno Stefanelli, Onder Ozdemirler, Mathieu Clavet, and Kursat Bayrakci. Several big name poker players were eliminated, including Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi, Chino Rheem, Sam Trickett, John Racener, Nicolas Chouity, Chip Jett, Karina Jett, Sorel Mizzi, and Jean-Robert Bellande. Nicolas Chouity started out as top of both combined fields and ended up busted by the end of the night.
Only 46 of 141 players survived Day 2.

Highlights of Day 2:

Carter Phillips was able to double up on the first hand, moving to nearly 20,000 chips. David Benyamine doubled up at the expense of Saltuk Soran. Dominik Nitsche doubled up through Alexey Rybin. Chris Cellery lost big to Full Tilt Pro Van Marcus, whose stack grew to about 132,000 chips after Cellery’s flush never came and he lost to Marcus’ set of nines. Mustafa Meryumoglu took out EPT title and a WSOP bracelet holder Carter Phillips. November Niner John Dolan made it through the day. Van Marcus took an opponent out in a sizeable hand that brought Marcus to the front of the pack at 228,000 chips. Top two stacks Van Marcus (212,000) and Roy Yaacoub (165,000) were seated at a table with day 1 chip leader Nicolas Chouity. In an odd hand, Chouity, wearing headphones, thought action remained on his opponent, Hakan Kuscu, who had verbally announced he was all-in. The timer was in fact running on Chouity and the floorman counted Chouity’s hand dead. The surprised Chouity petitioned the tournament director who decided the hand was still live, with action on Chouity, who called. Kuscu won the hand with quad nines and Chouity was eliminated. Manig Loeser took the chip lead through a hand with John Dolan, topping up to 270,000 chips. Chino Rheem was the chip leader at one time on day 2 but was busted by Bruno Stefanelli late in the day. Stefanelli’s win brought him to about 250,000 chips. Late on day 2, Foivos Pettas eliminated Ori Miller, who took second in the High Roller Freeze-Out. Onder Ozdemirler re-raised Dominik Nitsche’s pre-flop raise of 4,500 to 150,000 and Nitsche called all in for about 116,000 and was eliminated when Ozdemirler’s kings topped Nitsche’s pocket queens.

Day 3

On Day 3 of the Main Event, 45 players were whittled down to just 18. Mathieu Clavet was the chip leader at the end of Day 3 with 650,000 chips. Well known players who made it through Day 3 include Day 2 chip leader Manig Loeser (who dropped some chips along the way), David Benyamine, Full Tilt pro Van Marcus, Kelly Kim, Eric Mizrachi, Jeff Hakim, and Mathieu Clavet.

Highlights of Day 3:

lmaz Oguz went all-in pre-flop and November Niner John Nolan, with a stack of 58,700 called and won with pocket jacks to double up to 125,000 chips. David Benyamine doubled through Kelly Kim and made trouble for Van Marcus in two hands- first when he beat Marcus with jack high and later when Benyamine bet Marcus down with pocket queens. Eric Mizrachi doubled through Zsolt Vasvenszki to raise Mizrachi’s stack to 180,000 chips. Rob Peltekci fell in two consecutive big hands, losing 168,000 to Kfir Yamin and then the rest to Van Marcus on the very next hand.

Day 4

At the end of Day 4, Zsolt Vasvenszki was the chipleader of the Full Tilt Poker Merit Cyrus Classic Main Event with 1,885,000 chips. Popular players who were eliminated included Kelly Kim, David Benyamine, Day 2 chip leader Manig Loeser, Eric Mizrachi, and Jeff Hakim.

Highlights of Day 4:

Early on day 4, David Benyamine ended up short after losing to Chris Karagulleyan, then doubled up through Kfir Yamin. Benyamine went on to eliminate Yilmaz Oguz. Eric Mizrachi was the first to be eliminated on day 4, losing with pocket fours to Kfir Yamin’s pair of queens. Jeff Hakim doubled to 281,000 through Kfir Yamin. Martin Loeser eliminated Kelly Kim when Loeser’s pocket queens beat Kim’s pocket tens. Zsolt Vasvenszki started the day in second place and quickly grew his chip stack. Vasvenszki eliminated Kfir Yamin with a better ace that lifted Vasvenszki’s stack to 870,000, then gained even more chips through David Benyamine to lead the pack with 940,000. The chip leader then eliminated Jeff Hakim when Hakim’s pocket twos fell to Vasvenszki’s pair of kings. Andreas Krause eliminated Manig Loeser when Loeser went all in pre-flop. Krause held pocket eights while Loeser had pocket queens. Krause hit his trips on the flop and Loeser was sent home. Benyamine was slowly chopped down, losing to Chris Karagulleyan and then again to Nanos Koustantinos, leaving Benyamine with only 59,000 chips. Shortly thereafter, Benyamine earned a full house on the river and beat Kari Somer to bring Benyamine up to 135,000. Somer then went on to eliminate Benyamine later on day 4. Zsolt Vasvenszki knocked out Chris Karagulleyan to bring the pool down to the final ten players.1 Mathieu Clavet then took out Foivos Pettas, and then Van Marcus eliminated Kari Somer. Marcus eliminated Geroges Hanna and, after Zsolt Vasvenszki doubled Andreas Krause to over 900,000, Marcus took the chip lead, his 1,480,000 ahead of Vasvenszki’s 1,350,000. Vasvenszki later eliminated Nanos Koustantinos to end the day as the chip leader with 1,885,000 chips.

Day 5

On Day 5, at the final table of the Full Tilt Poker Merit Cyrus Classic Main Event, Andreas Krause defeated Mathieu Clavet to win the Main Event and capture $415,780 in winnings. Krause was only one of 181 players in the Main Event, but he managed to be the final player seated, gathering 5,795,000 chips and the win.

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It was announced a while ago that the next official challenger to Tom Dwan screen name durrrr in the Tom Dwan Million Dollar Challenge would be Dan Cates screen name JungleMan12. After a bit of speculation and hype by poker sites all over the world, the official start to the 2nd installment of the Million Dollar Challenge began early Friday morning on Full Tilt Poker.

As most everyone knows already, in order to take part in the Million Dollar Challenge, someone must put up $500,000 as a prop bet and then play durrrr in 50,000 hands of heads-up poker. Players must play four heads-up session at a time and must risk their own money. At the start of the session, a player must pick either PL Omaha or NL Holdem as their game, and that is the game that will take place throughout the challenge. At the end of 50,000 hands, if Dwan is ahead, he takes the players $500,000 in addition to the money won during the challenge. If the challenger wins, not only do they get the money won while playing, but they receive $500,000 from Dwan, plus an additional $1 Million bonus.

In this edition of the Million Dollar Challenge, the game of choice is No Limit Holdem. As you may recall, Patrik Antonius chose PL Omaha. Phil Ivey is the holder of the $500,000 from each player. Also, there are a couple of rules added onto this challenge. First, players need to add on if their stack is below 75 big blinds and can get up anytime effective stacks are greater than 250 big blinds. Also, all-ins will be ran twice in order to cut down on variance. In addition, the players agreed that they can play as many as six tables at once.

The first session between these two players began at 12:35 a.m. EDT Friday Morning and the first session between the two lasted about 2 and a half hours. At the end of the session, the players logged in 1,651 hands and Dwan emerged ahead $129,888. A two hour break then ensued and Dwan returned around 5:15 a.m. to start session two.

The second session lasted around seven hours and during that time Cates went on a massive heater. He rebounded from his $129k loss to pull even before going ahead about $150,000. Then, during the last hour of play, he ran a massive heater to pull ahead a total of $518,191 after 5,829 total hands played.

After one night, Dwan and Cates have over 11% of the challenge completed. It took Dwan and Antonius over a month to pull this off in their challenge. At the rate this challenge is going, we might be done by September. We had no clue when Antonius will finish his challenge.

Many give Cates a big advantage over Dwan in this one. According to PokerTableRatings, Dwan has lost more than $1.4 Million lifetime to Cates going into this challenge. So far, Cates has continued to dominate Dwan. Can he continue his domination? Stay tuned as we bring you more from the Million Dollar Challenge.

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Months ago, Tom Dwan screen name durrrr issued a massive challenge to anyone online willing to play him heads up at $200/$400 either Pot Limit Omaha or No Limit Hold’Em if they agreed to play on four tables or more. 50,000 hands had to be played and Dwan would put up $1.5 million against an opponents $500,000 on who would end the competition winning more money. Patrik Antonius accepted, however the game has yet to be finished with only 20,700 hands beings finished to this point. While Dwan is up over $2,000,000 in that match, the internet world exploded when the challenge got revisited recently. Daniel Cates screen name Jungleman12 accepted the same challenge, this time playing No Limit Hold’Em. We caught a glimpse of some early play in the challenge in this session. The first big hand saw Dwan winning a big pot for over $40,000.

Cates got quick revenge here. After Dwan made a 3/4 pot bet on the river, Cates moved all in, forcing Dwan to lay his hand down.

Dwan took down this next big pot with a bet on the river.

This next hand was the most interesting of the day. After a three bet preflop, Dwan led out the flop, only to be raised by Cates. After Dwan used part of his time bank, he put in a sizable three bet, putting the pressure back on his opponent. Cates went into the tank himself before making a four bet to send the railbirds buzzing. Dwan folded, and gave the big pot up to ‘Jungleman23.’

The biggest pot we saw so far took place here. The two got it all in on the turn, with Dwan dead to a heart. He missed on both runs, giving the $145,000 pot to Cates.

Cates continued his good run with a lead bet on this river.

Dwan, getting short on a table, fought back by four bet shoving this pot preflop.

A massive over ebt by Cates won him this pot of over $30,000.

Tom Dwan got some back in this hand with a bet on the river.

Two pair was good enough for Cates to win this pot from Dwan.

On the day, Daniel ‘Jungleman23′ Cates took a lead on Dwan in the challenge, to the tune of over $100,000.

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