Friday, August 12, 2011

More on Cates and the scandal

Mere minutes after I did my post about Daniel Cates yesterday, an acquaintance of mine with excellent connections in the industry contacted me privately to say that I was likely to have to revise my opinion very soon. A few minutes ago, I learned the basis for this advance warning. Cates did an interview with NoahSD of SubjectPoker.com. He then contacted Noah again and admitted that he had lied in the just-completed interview, and confessed that it was he who had played on Girah's account, not Qureshi. They did a second interview to explain this. Audio of both interviews has been posted here. It's about two hours of audio, so I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet, but I wanted to get this note up as quickly as possible, since I expect to be asked whether this revelation changes my opinion of Cates. The answer is yes, it does, and I'm very sad to learn that my belief in his integrity was mistaken. I hope that this is all the bad news that is to come, that he learns from his mistake, and that, over time, he can rebuild his reputation in a manner similar to what Justin Bonomo has accomplished in recovering from his early missteps. I remain deeply grateful to Daniel for the opportunity he gave me at the World Series of Poker.


Addendum

There is an excellent "Cliff's Notes" summary of the whole mess here.



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Why do people think poker players are honest people. People see them on tv or read thier blogs and somehow think they are good people. JM is just like the rest of the idiots that give poker and gambling a stigme of being dirty. This does nothing to help getting poker here in the US. How many scandles can poker handle?