You’re probably familiar with the old maxim, if you want something done, ask a busy man. The phrase is attributed to Benjamin Franklin – a man famous for getting busy – and it explains a lot. Chiefly, why no one ever asks me to do anything?
I maintain a very light schedule, currently caught, as I am, somewhere between early retirement and late-stage capitalism. With this self-perpetuating problem, the next major event on my calendar might be my own funeral.
But one man who doesn’t have this problem is poker pro and provocateur, Dan “Jungleman” Cates. He’s so busy, it’s as if he’s driven by another old maxim, If you want something done right, do it yourself.
I don’t subscribe to that at all, except when it comes to sex, but Jungleman appears to have applied it to, well, everything. Let’s review:
Besides his normal schedule of high-stakes tournament poker and heads-up matches against some of the most inflated heads in poker, this past month, Jungle threw his hat into the ring. Literally. Okay, there wasn’t a hat, but there was a ring.
On January 22, a boxing match took place between Dan “Jungleman” Cates and Ryan “Elf” Noel, a sports bettor and host of a show devoted to the same.
The fight was held at the Mayborne Hotel in Beverly Hills and was put on by the Beverly Hills Fight Club. As you may recall, the first rule of Beverly Hills Fight Club is, don’t talk about Beverly Hill Fight Club, except on Twitter and Instagram.
There was plenty of talk.
After much hype, The Rumble with Jungle was a short affair. As a few dozen millionaires watched from their $6,000 seats, Jungle got a jump on his spring cleaning by getting his clock cleaned.
In the second of three rounds, Cates was hit by Noel when he wasn’t looking. The match was ended there, as Jungle was bleeding and obviously rattled. The fight was ruled a no-contest, and it was not one.
That would have been enough of a month for most people, but not for Jungleman, who recently appointed himself the adjudicator of other poker players’ debts.
For example, just last week, he weighed in on a longstanding dispute between old school reg, Dan Heimiller, and Phil Gordon, entrepreneur, poker player, author of the semi-seminal Little Green Book, and, in general, a guy with a lot of green.
If you don’t want to bother following the thread, I will shorthand it: Heimiller has owed $4,000 to Gordon for over 15 years. After various stalls by Heimiller, Gordon all but forgot about it, until he heard that Debitor Dan was betting a million dollars on a fight in 2017. I’ve got to admit, this sort of thing might annoy a creditor.
Jumping ahead, Jungleman has now made this his cause celebre poker by splashing it all over the water closet formerly known as Twitter. This, in turn, caused Heimiller, after years of avoidance and/or pleading poverty, to announce, in the same rancid space, his detailed non-payment plan.
Basically, Dan Heimiller has attempted to justify not repaying Gordon the four grand because Gordon was a partner in Full Tilt, where Lack of Action Dan had the same amount stored when Black Friday hit.
Heimiller never got his money back, and since Gordon profited by his affiliation with the site of the crime, they are, in Heimiller’s mind, even. (Sorry, that summary took longer than reading the thread, but I get paid by the word).
Jungleman ruled in favor of Phil Gordon, but his campaign to expose corruption in poker didn’t end there:
Detective Dan, Cates’ latest alter ego, has invited all those who feel they’ve been victimized by cheating in poker to present their case to… You guessed it, him.
The whole thing was starting to sound a little grandiose: the boxing, the debt resolution service, Detective Dan? At this point, I had to ask myself, is he kidding? It’s hard to tell, as Cates pointed out himself with this revelatory X post from 2023:
Cates wrote: “Having Autism is kind of a funny superpower in that people can’t really be sure if I’m joking or not when I say and do stupid shit.”
Wow. Reading this floored me for several reasons: Cates’ candor, his self-awareness, and his sense of humor. And one more thing. In my research for this article, I read that Benjamin Franklin is widely believed to have been on the autism spectrum.
Ben Franklin, the guy who knew, if you want to get something done, ask a busy man. The guy who discovered electricity, published the Farmers’ Almanac, signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and invented the stove. The stove.
You’re in good company, Jungle. Hats off. But please, no more fights. You might scramble that beautiful brain.
Ren Lin, Ren Deep
Much has been said about WPT Global bringing in Ren Lin, a disgraced cheater, as one of their ambassadors, and I agree with most of it. What kind of organization hires such suspect people? I mean, besides the current United States government.
When he was originally banned from the WSOP for being caught providing real-time assistance to another player in a GGPoker online event, Ren Lin did receive a lot of support because he is widely thought to be a great guy.
Yeah, he is a great guy. He’ll help you cheat. To quote an old friend, comedian Dave Attell, “A good friend helps you move, a best friend helps you move… a body.” At the time of my writing, Ren Lin is not listed on WPT Global’s website as one of their ambassadors. I hope Detective Dan got him.
