Digital Social Hour - The Jungle Man Chronicles: Inside the Mind of Poker Pro Dan Cates | Digital Social Hour #34

Episode Date: June 21, 2023

Hey there, guys! I've got JUST the podcast episode for you! In our latest, I welcomed my co-host Charlie, and our special guest, pro poker player Dan, who has a bone to pick with the seemingly nice Phil Galfons! 🃏 You won't believe it, but Dan suspects Phil has a dastardly plan and takes it upon himself to bring him to justice. Along the way, we find out how Dan uses Kriya yoga and transcendental meditation to keep his cool during high-stakes games. Not only does he share some hilarious stories, like a ridiculous IV tale, but also some GENUINE advice no poker player should miss! 💡 This episode isn't only about poker –It has valuable takeaways that we can apply in our everyday lives, like the essential traits of honesty, simplicity and perseverance. And of course, we just HAD to finish the episode with an epic game – the prize: courtside Knicks tickets! 🏀 So what are you waiting for? Get your poker face on and tune into our episode NOW! Join us for riveting conversations, special revelations, and so much more! 🎧 --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/digitalsocialhour/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the digital social hour guys. I am here with my co-host Charlie Cavalier and our guest today Dan Cates. How we doing fellas? I'm doing pretty decent. Yeah, feeling pretty good. Nice. What brings you to Vegas today? So there is this poker player, very nice poker player named Phil Galfons. He's nice to everyone. He's one of the best players in the world. He's also a businessman. He's got a kid. I have the belief you could say that he's trying to take over

the poker social the poker He's trying to take over the poker world in some kind of way. He's got some kind of dastardly plan. He's too nice. Someone has to take him in. Someone has got to take him down. He's known also as his moniker mr falcons okay so i have to play in las vegas on the site wsop.com he believes that i'm scared but i had to prove him wrong and i also have to

someone's got to take him to justice so far as beating everyone in his challenge and i'm the guy who's going to take him down okay how So far, he's beaten everyone in his challenge, and I'm the guy who's going to take him down. Okay. How's the challenge going currently? Because I know you played with him earlier today. Well, it's going according to plan, you could say. I've successfully duped him into thinking he's got a real chance by him being up about $90,000. But it's all part of the plan.

You're just getting that information for now. You're going to act on it later. I'm letting him get soft and comfortable. Right, right. So is Mr. Falcons a superhero or a supervillain? People think he's a superhero. And he certainly looks like a superhero with all his actions and his words and all the things that he does. But I know the truth, that he's, in spite of nearly of nearly 100 evidence that he's got a superly

dastardly plan and it's probably a super villain what gave that vibe it's too nice it's too nice and you have to be able to see the forest um from the trees let's put it like that okay you seem very spiritual uh you could say so i kind of go back and forth i try to align logic and spirituality and i'm being serious um i mean like there's a lot of spiritual stuff that's in the woo direction in the straight up woo direction there's some that's in the woo direction that is totally completely legit and some that's also confirmed legit and some of that that's been um in the woo section at various points in time such as meditation and yoga which is interesting um it's actually quite compelling evidence that there's something there that those things are real so do you meditate and do yoga uh yeah i do most days at

least right now i'm doing kriya yoga and i'm doing lots of exercise which i mean yoga and some exercise is kind of similar i've been doing kung fu lessons and some stretching is kind of like that but i i think i'm going to try to get in my yoga during poker because i have no time and poker we're just like sitting around doing nothing yeah uh whereas like if you do some yoga stretches it's probably some like fun way of combining them but yes is the answer to your question i never thought i'd be the guy doing meditation sitting around doing breathing exercises every day but here i am and i'm finally convinced are you utilizing the the Wim Hof breathing method?

I want to check out Wim Hof's stuff at some point in time, but I am not. I met a guy that I believe is a real version of, you could say, the divine or an enlightened person. They're called the Jivan Mukta. I think I'm pronouncing that right. In the philosophy Advaita Vedanta. That one I know I'm pronouncing right. That one's pretty good at philosophy.

Really, this guy doesn't seem to have any faults, and he's got a whole course. He's got a bunch of courses, and he like promotes all his stuff, he goes all he's actually he's got quite a bit of money but he doesn't spend it uh he doesn't buy lavish things at all he like gives a lot to the poor and it's quite simple and i follow his stuff uh i think it's really good and it was a combination of a lot of things that i've been looking at and you know like so i've learned about kriya yoga and i've learned about uh transcendental meditation and and what he was doing was basically a combination of both of those i was like okay there's a lot of um i mean the the thing i said about the forest and the trees is also emotionally true is it uh so he um there's a lot of positive signs there so it's kind of like you can have um

yeah there's a lot of positive signs there's a lot of benefits of doing these sorts of breathing exercises apparently so i've been doing his practice essentially and like uh yeah i mean he just did it this guy there's also a lot of miracles around him too, like really a lot. And one of his books I got, or I got a couple of his books. They're all really good and have good insights. His name's Ravi Shankar.

He's actually really well known. He's got an ashram. There's things called the Art of Living. I'm happy to promote him for free. That's awesome. The power of the breath is crazy i don't know if you guys saw when wim hof injected himself with a disease and then he breathed his way out of it i did not see that just through the power of breath i did not see this but definitely i need to try his stuff he didn't use like the cold or anything like that um no just breath oh okay yeah it was insane i did not see that that's wild i didn't know you

could do that so what's the breathing technique that you're using um i've done it a couple times i've done it i've done actually like on a show that will come out it'll be kind of goofy but i it's called um well it's mostly kriya yoga exercises um what's kriya yoga i haven't heard of that it's a version of yoga that that does breathing exercises basically and uh it just does something to your to your nervous system somehow that makes you happier and also makes your moods not swing too hard or at least makes them swing uh makes the swings uh ultimately less like if you have a big swing it'll like narrow it really fast um but it's a mix of exercises at some breathing through the back of your uh throat there's like scientific explanations for all of

them although i don't know them all there's some bastrikas which is a kriya yoga exercise there's like scientific explanations for all of them, although I don't know them all. There's some, bastrikas, which is a Kriya yoga exercise. It's like a fast exercise where you do something like this and breathe in and out really fast. A lot of other basic breath exercises. Yeah, it's not so crazy in the Kriya yoga, but it's just not that mainstream talked about. Yeah. Actually, the yoga that Paramhansa Yogananda brings

from India to California is Kriya yoga. So that may be the real reason why a lot of people know of it in the U.S. Interesting. I haven't heard of it. Have you? I have not, but I'm interested

because you are a world-class poker player. How much of what we're talking about, breathing techniques, any of this stuff, do you do at the table or does it have an effect on your game? You know what's funny? I guess I must be the first person

that's done these breathing exercises in front of everyone but i'm doing them because if i don't i literally will not have time to do them a lot of the time because i'm just so busy and um they're pretty weird and what was your question how much of this stuff affects your game, and are you doing it at the table when you're playing? I'm just doing it, but it's really obvious. And it should actually affect a poker player's game because it makes you less, I think the word is neurotic. Or at least if you are neurotic, it calms all that down.

And maybe there's some benefits actually to being neurotic, but I don't remember what they are and that's exactly what you need in poker because you can get really stressed and get in all kinds of emotional states and this seems like meditation and this seems exactly exactly what would calm you down yeah when you see yourself getting tilted are there any techniques you start doing to sort of calm yourself down um one is three uh three bedding a lot that that calms me down and winning pots um but seriously uh taking a walk is pretty helpful maybe like meditation probably would be helpful but i've not actually done that too much and

usually i take some kind of a break or like what else do i do i i like get a massage that i get a massage anyway if i'm like super stressed i'm like i've seen a photo of you getting a head massage a lot of people have seen me getting a head massage or getting a photo of me getting a massage what is the most ridiculous thing you've seen someone do at the table you know other than getting an argument having something come in to you know help them come in to, you know, help them? Come in to help them? Like get a massage or take a walk. What's the most ridiculous thing you've ever seen someone do at the table for themselves?

To try to get over tilt? Sure, whatever. Just ridiculous, period. Ridiculous, period. I've seen, well, I think people get IVs. Sometimes they leave and get IVs. That seems like not the worst idea

and that'll keep you awake for a while I've never actually done that but I've heard of it I have seen someone like get like stretched and actually

they lost because of me this Asian player named Shanghai Wong he was like losing and it was mostly like me beating him from running hot and also bluffing him and stuff so he's screaming my name jungle man and uh he's on like the floor and he's some masseuse is stretching him in uh montenegro i believe um that was up there uh

anyone pull out a weapon of some sort in rageage? No, I've never seen that, but I've heard people just be completely insane. So there's that. Oh, I thought about... There's actually this... One thing I realized is that poker, in theory, kind of helps you to deal, or it should help you to deal with people when they get super emotional,

which is kind of a rare thing, because it's a rare situation when someone gets super emotional so you get practice in that situation but in poker it's not as rare because people get on rage tilt like relatively often and you kind of have a moment to calm them down um uh at the poker table or like think about what will actually work because it's not logic logic's not what works right when someone's really about what will actually work because it's not logic logic's not what works right when someone's really mad i'm actually like uh it's actually super annoying when someone's like trying to like convince you not to be mad when you're mad that's not how it

works relatable yeah uh and that's one funny application uh So that can be crossed over from poker to relationships where, you know, if you say the wrong thing and someone's mad, it can cause more problems and more damage. And it's like not that easy to know what to do in those situations. Indeed. A lot of my audience is probably not even playing poker are the beginners so what what's some actionable advice you could give to someone looking to start their poker journey out uh let's see without losing a ton of money like i've read that happen to you and you had to work at mcdonald's um prepare to lose a lot but not necessarily a lot of money that might be the first thing oh god lose a lot mentally it will lose a lot just get used to losing um is or to expect to

lose first probably is a good advice now that i think about it it's sort of like the more you expect to lose the more that helps you to get win faster Seems like there's something like that there. Other than that, just to get the basics right. Once you get the basics right, you can beat people pretty easily, I think, at poker, is my guess. There are some... Because once you get the basics right, a lot of the other stuff within that is beyond that.

I mean, you can learn all that stuff, but it's sort of finer and finer tuning. And you can get caught up in all that, uh, I mean, you can learn all that stuff, but it's sort of finer and finer tuning. Um, and it can, you can get caught up in all these like, uh, oscillations, but really the basics are,

even though they're like the simple decisions, uh, they are what matter really a lot. Hmm. Got it. Um, all right. Our friend Scott here is about to join us.

He's going to play you heads up for some courtside Knicks tickets. Is that all right with you? Yeah, that's okay. Let's do it, Scott. All right. We'll keep asking you some stuff while you guys play. Charlie's going to be our dealer here. And I will try my best not to mess up all of the dealing,

and we're going to shuffle the cards real quick. While we're doing that, how does one get the nickname Jungleman? Well, if you're from the jungle, you get to be called Jungleman. And you're from the jungle, you get to be called Jungle Man. And you're from the jungle? Sort of. Any further explanation on that one, or is that what we're working with? Well, that's a back story I often run with, that my parents went to Costa Rica, and then they never came back, and they left left me there and I was raised by the monkeys there. Wow.

Um, often people kind of believe me for a while or at least they, they're not sure if you like say with enough confidence. Yeah. But the real story is that I, when I first started playing poker, um, no one knew where I came from and I was playing kind of crazy and I had

hairy arms and I had long hair. My hair was messy, so they called me Jungle Man. Okay. That's the real story, and that was my online name. Interesting. So what we're going to do here is we're going to play heads up. Everyone's starting with 5,000 in chips. We're going to play until the end of the podcast,

and the person with the most at the end wins. Pretty simple. Yeah? All right, cool. That does affect decisions by the way i just yeah that's why i wanted to get it out there uh you know now we got 13 minutes sean you played a poker tournament for the first time ever recently what was that like it was actually a lot of fun one thing i will say about poker is it's really good for networking

yeah there's a lot of interesting people you meet at the table um i did not do well it was my first time ever so i got about 40th place out of 100 but i met some cool people and it was fun yeah it is uh one of the unique situations that is good for networking because you it's kind of egalitarian in that i don't know if that's the right word didn't that kind of anyone can play all you need to do is buy in or get the seat yeah essentially i have the. I have the idea to host poker events of sorts, among other events, when I'm in Los Angeles. Because there's really a lot of interest for it. Because there's so much on the line,

I'm going to leave it to you guys. I'm going to have you tell me when I'm ready to deal. Because I'm not going to be the one that messes this up. Okay. Yeah, you can deal. Okay. Do you want to burn one? Or are you going to get one? Are you supposed to raise or something? You have to look at your cards first. Well, I'm not going to be the one that messes this up. Okay. Yeah, you can deal. Okay. Do you want to burn one? Do you want to get one?

You're supposed to raise or something. You have to look at your cards first. Well, I'm not playing. You're playing Scott. Oh, well, he's got to look at his cards first. Well, that's why he said I should deal. Oh, I see. Okay.

Should we redo that? Yeah, just figure that out. Okay. Okay. I check. Check. For good? Are you going to keep asking me questions?

We are. I got into this. Yeah, and I want to know, how did you get your start in this, Dan? What was the first time where you decided, hey, because I read that you first started in online. How did this first inclination come about that you decided you should log in on the internet and start playing poker for money uh well it was after i played live poker and lost three thousand dollars and then my parents locked out my savings and i knew that i could play online for much smaller that's how i played online uh that's how i first played online when i was 17 but i was an 18 that was part of the problem i thought

i needed to be 18 and then uh yeah i was like tired of playing larger stakes for like 100 or 200 dollar buy-ins i was like thinking to myself i just want to play small i'm tired of losing um so i played five and ten dollar games online instead and worked at mcdonald's and what was the first horrible experience you had losing a bunch of money playing poker uh how much money you were talking give me a number it's all relative right at different stages in your life whatever a lot is like have you had a losing year i've had a losing year yes i've had one losing year out of 15 that's pretty good uh i think i've i might have had two i'm not sure but um it's more like other stuff got in the way and stuff but uh one of

the um yeah one i've had i've been cheated a number of times one time i was cheated for four thousand dollars i've done incredibly stupid things i've uh it's on you by the way um so i uh 300 So I... 300. I went to a friend's house and basically a friend sweated my friend who was playing me from somewhere else. Make it six. And... Yeah, I basically...

They were relaying cards, essentially. And I lost $4,000 playing. Wow. And... Did you get it back? I did not, no. But you called them out on the cheating? and I lost $4,000 playing. Wow. And, um, did you get it back? I did not. No. But you called them out on the cheating.

I found, um, I found out that one person roughly cheated me. There must've been two people essentially working together. No, I know, I know who one of them was, but like there was not a whole lot I could do.

Right. But it's one of these situations where like, you situations where one of them is kind of a deadbeat. It's on you, by the way. Check. Okay. And the other one, I'm not really sure who it is. I'm pretty sure it's either one or two people. Maybe I should.

Yeah. I saw what happened in that recent whole scandal. The recent scandal? With, who was it? Did you see that? It was all over Twitter, bro. No. Jack's up?

It was at the lodge, I think. Oh, shit. Dang, Scott's doing well here. Two for two, Scott. All right. You got to focus up. If you want us to stop asking. No, go ahead. Keep going. Where do you see the intersection with AI and poker?

That'll be interesting to see because what will be interesting to see because what will be interesting to see is if people if they have much trouble to create an ai that can learn every game in poker that would be pretty scary if they can learn it pretty well right but they have been able to create um they they have been i don't know a whole lot about how AI works. I know a little bit about how they try to create intelligence and some of the methods,

but I do know that AI is very, very good at some of the games in poker. At limit games, it could be really good, but limit games are quite simple, to be honest. I don't know any stories of robots or computers playing poker or doing anything of the sort you might oh no no the computers play online decent amount it's just a matter of if sites try to do something about it that's one thing that poker stars did do well was get rid of people get rid of bots playing online. They play online some places if they're not regulated enough.

Where is your favorite place to play online? I like GG Poker. Software's really good. It's fun. It's got lots of fun emotions and things like that. Let's see. Yeah, GG Poker. Do you prefer online or in person playing hmm i would say usually online online because you could just relax at home and

yeah well you don't have to go anywhere and you can do other things what other things we talking about some youtube videos uh what else i can do other things. What other things are we talking about? Some YouTube videos. What else? I can do my breathing exercises in peace. I can order food. What else? I can watch a movie maybe. I don't really do that.

I've been trying to learn the flute a little bit while I play. I used to play that in fifth grade when they made you pick an instrument. Did you pick the flute? It's the hardest instrument. Yeah, I did not have a good time. It's not. It's so hard to play. Then I tried trumpet and that was even worse. The trumpet's even harder?

The spit just compiles in it and it's just disgusting. Oh, no. I learned the piano. I got lucky. That one's fun. My mom made me do that, too, when I was a kid. What is the most realistic poker movie you've ever seen for living the life of being a professional poker player?

You know what? I've only seen like two poker movies. I haven't seen Molly's Game. I've only seen Rounders. Rounders can be realistic, i guess like there's not really i don't know if you're like trying to like grind out a living at like 5 10 or something i could see it being realistic and you're like taking shots it's on you five minutes left it's your Check. 300.

Cool. By the way, the fact that there's only five minutes left should change the strategy quite a lot. So explain. I'm all in. You're all in? Oh, man. This could determine it it I can't call it nothing Oh It is a smartfold Wow Scott's doing well, you're not supposed to flip No, I think I need 200 back back. Oh, yeah, $200 back for Charlie. I'll give you some change.

What's the house rate for me on this situation? I'll give you 3% of the ticket, so you've got to figure that out with Scott or Dan if he wins, if he manages this comeback. It's kind of a luxury poker room. It's very intimate. What lessons have you learned in poker that helped you in life and business one is uh i mean one thing

that poker teaches you is to be it teaches a couple things really well it teaches you to be really open minded if you if you manage to win i should be if you if you want to win that's quite important because if you never open your mind you'll lose and you won't learn anything um but let's see 400 um because like all there's

tons of times where you think you know everything and you don't all the time so it's like well shit what when do i know everything i guess you just don't um yeah and uh what else um it teaches you experientially to persevere because you need to be you need to have tough skin in poker to uh to win also like you you lose quite a lot and it's an unusual game in that it's just so normal that you have to at some point it feels like normal to lose like i don't care that i'm losing right essentially right now they pull the emotion away from the the loss as much as possible uh a decent a minute or at least you get used to it really fast uh 200 so those things let's see. Yeah, those are two examples.

Nice. All right, so 300. What similarities do you notice in all the top poker players? What do they have in common? They're very honorable. It's very rare for a top poker player to not pay we we can like say that we owe like an amount and not write a contract and it's just pretty much always paid i mean it would be interesting to get like a default rate but like if someone's successful and has it they always pay and even if they don't have it they often pay um they uh they don't in my

experience they're they're not very bullshitty people like they they uh when they talk they don't like you know say something they don't mean whereas this is more common in other uh places like if in like networking for example right um do you think it's because it's such a small community that if they screwed someone over they wouldn't be able to show face i think it's it this one's in their nature to be honest i think i think uh yeah i think one thing i also think is that they're not generally the kinds of people that they're normally simple, I would say. That's been my experience. They're normally very open minded, but simple in that they at least this was me at some point.

But I had whatever going on that. That. Yeah, it was me for a long time i'm no longer a simple person i guess you can say that's a number of things he's slowly coming back i think we have a tally here while i'm one more minute so i guess two more hands or One one more hand. What do you guys want to do? I mean, I only win if I win, right? It's not a cash game I don't get any prize for this change of things I Think I'm the no I'm the button so you have to put in two I'm gonna raise it to 200 All right, I'm all in. Oh. Oh. We are both all in here.

I can do it. No. Oh. Rig the deck. Wow. Shit. Wow. What a match.

Too bad. All right. Well, that was a blast, Dan. Any closing comments you want to get out there? I really wanted that special prize. That was a good prize. Yeah. Oh, well. We'll still get you something.

All right. Cool. All right. Well, there you have it, guys. Thanks for tuning in. Digital Social Hour. It was a blast. Thanks for coming on, Dan. When you think about businesses that are selling through the roof, like Aloe or Allbirds or Skims, sure, you think about a great product, a cool brand, and brilliant marketing. But an often overlooked secret is actually the businesses behind the business, making selling simple.

For millions of businesses, that business is Shopify. Nobody does selling better than Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. And the not-so-secret secret? With ShopPay, that boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning way less carts going abandoned and way more sales going... So if you're into growing your business, your commerce platform better be ready to sell whatever your customers are scrolling or strolling on the web,

in your store, in their feed, and everywhere in between. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout Skims uses. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash try, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash try to upgrade your selling today. shopify.com slash try.