Daniel "jungleman12" Cates has issued an open challenge to anyone who wishes to take him on in a high stakes heads-up match. Challengers who can bring the cash to the table can face the icon in Prague next month.
Daniel "
jungleman12" Cates has issued an open challenge to anyone who feels like taking him on in a
high stakes heads-up battle.
The challenge is brought forward by Cates in collaboration with British staking site
Pokerfarm.com, and will take place during the Prague Poker Festival in the Czech capital on December 6.
The heads-up battle will follow immediately after the WPT Prague, and will be streamed with a fifteen-minute delay with hole cards on www.thepokerfarm.com.
Anyone interested will need to bring at least €100,000 to the table, where the chosen game will be NLHE with blinds of €200/€400.
"I'm sick and tired of all the negative publicity the game of poker has received in the past few months," Cates said when asked about his motivations for issuing the challenge.
"As someone who loves the game, I think the poker world deserves to know who the best
poker player on the planet is. I'm confident that is me. If anyone has the nerve to take me on, let them come to Prague in December and sit down across from me at the table," he added.
According to the organizers, the challenge has already received plenty of attention, although it remains unknown who Cates will play.
Cates has already been tangling with some of the world's best heads-up players, playing both in the Durrrr Challenge on Full Tilt Poker and Isildur's SuperStar Showdown on
PokerStars.
While he still leads the Durrrr Challenge by a wide margin with roughly two-thirds of the agreed 50,000 hands played, he lost to Blom, who has since kept an impressive 8-2 record in the SuperStar Showdown series.
Both of these challenges were played online, and the Prague challenge will be the first time the 22-year-old American will play a similar duel live, with his hole cards exposed for the
TV cameras.
Still the online phenomenon remains confident that no one will be able to beat him.
"Nobody can beat me, and I'm more than prepared to put my money where my mouth is," he said.
The match will allow for players to do re-buys for an initial period of play, with the winner to be determined either by the player who is ahead after a predetermined time period or when the losing player gives up the game.