"Jungleman12" And The Secret To His Poker Success

Daniel Cates aka “Jungleman12” is a 20 year old University of Maryland student who, since he started playing the game in 2008, has been living the kind of poker life that for most other players exists only in their dreams.
Starting at $0.25/0.50 NLHE and moving up the levels as he went, he had managed to accumulate $100,000 in winnings by the end of his first year and at present has earned $2.266 million over 762,920 played at Full Tilt Poker’s virtual felts.
So how does someone achieve so much success right from the start? According to Jungleman12 the key to his success lies in aggression and having the right character traits. As he explains:
“Aggressive bankroll management, aggressive learning…but there is some innate talent involved…Talent in its most generic sense (i.e. ability to learn) is necessary, but perhaps even more so is also talent in terms of character traits such as work ethic, ambition, open mindedness, rationality, etc. In fact, I’d say these traits are essential to being successful in anything, not just poker.”
However, it hasn’t all been plain sailing for the young poker prodigy and as well as fueling his success, Daniel Cates needed all those traits in abundance to help him overcome the inevitable hardships experienced by all players of the game.
Recalling his biggest career setback to date of losing $500k to Isildur1 and then a further $90k  in his next session, Daniel Cates described feeling “really awful for the next few days.”
However, even that didn’t hold him back for long and he was able to recoup his losses within a mere month and continue his relentless assault on Full Tilt’s high stakes game.
Currently lying 3rd on the sites top earners for 2010, just behind Tom Dwan and Phil Ivey, “Jungleman12” has now lined up perhaps his greatest challenge to date and will shortly be taking on the 24-year-old Tom Dwan in a 50,000-hand heads-up match.
Billed as the “Durrrr Challenge Part II,” Jungleman12 couldn’t resist the 3-1 odds Dwan had offered him and so he’s ponied up $500,000 of his cash in the hope of adding another $1.5 million of Dwan’s stack to his own.
PokerTableRatings.com (PTR) shows that Jungleman12 has already won $786,370 from Dwan over 13,448 hands in previous encounters played on the site but that could all change when their $200/$400 Heads-Up No Limit Hold’em or PLO match gets underway.
Patrik Antonius is currently down $2,059,719 against Dwan in the first challenge and one thing for sure is when “Jungleman12” takes his place, these two prodigious talents are bound to produce an explosive affair where the stakes could hardly be greater.