ShareDan “Jungleman” Cates has spoken with PokerNews about his fledgling podcast titled “Winning at the Game of Life.” The high-stakes legend talked about what he hopes to achieve with his new project with Chad Holloway, along with more personal matters and his plans for his playing career in the coming months.
Not Only Poker
It’s easy to understand why after so many years playing the game at the very highest level why Cates would be seeking fulfilment from avenues outside of the game.First up on the Winning at the Game of Life podcast was none other than Phil Hellmuth. A guy that Cates says fits exactly what he is trying to do.
“He’s succeeded at poker in a pretty extreme way, but he's also succeeded outside of poker in a pretty extreme way. And he has a lot of soft skills that I think people don't really recognize that are beneficial to business…”
Cates continues by expressing his wish to bring in mainstream celebrities onto the podcast to move slightly away from being exclusively about poker.
“I’d eventually like to do things besides poker, frankly," he said. "I mean, ideally, like really mainstream celebrities and stuff like that would be cool to get on. Or people who are legit famous or really good in their particular fields that maybe are loosely tied to poker.”
For now, the poker fans have been more than delighted to see Fedor Holz, Phil Galfond, and Patrik Antonius take a turn in the hot seat. Some real high flyers in our own field.
Cates is also interested in other characters we know from the poker world that are considered more successful in a field outside of poker. Bill Perkins and Rob Yong, for example. He mentions that Perkins might not be too keen to appear though, thinking back to the 2020 ghosting scandal where he was caught playing on somebody else’s account against the hedge fund trader.
To end the interview, Cates talks about how being a host himself is something he is looking forward to as a tool to help overcome his natural introversion.
“I'm looking forward to it (being a host), mostly. I’m kind of always at odds with my introversion, if you know what I mean, because I've been like really a massive introvert for a lot of my life, and I always have to fight against it basically to do these kinds of things. But being a host is one of the things I want to do better.”
It’s early days for the podcast but as one of the most popular poker players on the planet Cates should be able to build his show up into something special.
