In an exclusive interview with BLUFF Magazine, Daniel “jungleman12” Cates finally opened up about what he knows, and what his role was, in the ongoing saga involving the “Portuguese Poker Prodigy” Jose “Girah” Macedo scamming other high-stakes poker players.

The revelations came to light this weekend on the 2+2 poker forum and involve Girah “sweating” other high-stakes pros in real-time and then conveying their hole-card information to another player who would be conveniently playing against the person Girah was sweating.

Initially Cates issued a short response on 2+2 where he stated:

“when first heard about Girah possibly scamming, thought it was impossible says Dog wants them out of public attention because of their relationship with Girah and the “crazy ****” that would go down on 2+2 “Haseeb and I have nothing to do with Jose’s dumbass actions” didn’t like the way Girah was building hype for himself Girah is not his protege, he just coached him”

In a very lengthy, but not overly substantive interview, Cates made mainly short, vanilla, answers, but did offer one insight into what took place during the now very controversial BLUFF Pro Challenge at Lock Poker.

BLUFF: When Jose was disqualified from the BLUFF Poker Challenge on Lock Poker, did you know it was Haseeb who had played on the account?

Daniel Cates: Yes, but I did not want to get involved. I know it was not a habit.

Cates has managed to stay above the fray for the most part, while Macedo and Qureshi have received the bulk of the attention on the poker forums, and after his BLUFF interview he is likely to avoid any further interrogation, thanks in part to Qureshi’s damning interview which appeared on BLUFF Magazine just hours after Cates’ interview appeared.

One area where many in the poker world are curious as to Cates’ involvement with Qureshi and Macedo is in the backing arean; a subject BLUFF touched upon in the interview:

BLUFF: For people who aren’t familiar with the high stakes poker world, how common is it to back or coach somebody you’ve never met in person? Do any safety protocols exist for situations like this?

Daniel Cates: Pretty common for online poker, backing, etc. mostly has to do with reputation, results, mutual friends and perhaps some other things. Safety protocols do not really exist. I believe they don’t really exist because of the implied threat of something like this happening to the reputation of the stakee.

You can read the entire Daniel Cates interview at BLUFF Magazine

Tags: Bluff Magazine, Dumbass, Habit, Haseeb, High stakes poker, Hole Card, Hype, Interrogation, Ongoing Saga, Poker Bluff, Poker Challenge, Poker Forum, poker players, Poker World, Pro Challenge, Prodigy, Public Attention, Qureshi, Revelations, Vanilla

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 11th, 2011 at 10:33 am and is filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.