New Galfond Challenge Will See Galfond vs. Cates PLO Contest

Players February 2, 2023 by Dusan Jovanovic

Phil Galfond and Daniel Cates Summary

Dan “Jungleman” Cates is Galfond’s latest opponent in the Galfond Challenge
The match gets underway on February 2 on WSOP.com and run till Feb 5
Jungleman could hand Galfond his first loss in the high-stakes PLO challenge

Phil Galfond’s popular heads-up online pot-limit Omaha (PLO) contest called the “Galfond Challenge” is officially back!

The Run It Once (RIO) founder’s latest opponent is no other than Dan “Jungleman” Cates and the pair will battle it out starting February 2, 2023.

Cates Could be Galfond’s Toughest Opponent

Galfond and Cates will play €100/€200 PLO across 7,500 hands Thursday through Saturday, with WSOP.com playing host to the action. Each session will start at 8 a.m. PT and will take roughly four hours to complete, which means the action is expected to end around noon. It remains unknown whether the match would involve a side bet.

Galfond unveiled the details of the match in a recent post on Twitter. The poker community can’t wait for the battle to start, with some saying “Jungleman” could be Galfond’s toughest opponent yet in the competition.

It’s time to see if the falcon can survive the jungle 🦅

My #GalfondChallenge vs. @junglemandan finally begins!

We’ll play this Thurs-Sat from (roughly) 8am-Noon PT.

You’ll be able to catch me streaming on: https://t.co/95rCI2yhQt

Sub so you get alerted when we go live! pic.twitter.com/lUGQN6RvSj

— Phil Galfond (@PhilGalfond) January 30, 2023

Fans may catch the action live via Galfond’s YouTube channel. The livestream will run without standard commentary, but Galfond will interact with the audience while the stream is ongoing.

Galfond’s Past Challengers

Galfond launched the high-stakes PLO challenge back in 2019, with online legend “Venividi1993” stepping up as his first opponent. Galfond was the favorite to win the match which involved 25,000 hands, but “Venividi1993” stunned everyone when he left the host of the action in the red for almost €1 million over 15 sessions, forcing him to suspend the match.

Galfond contemplated quitting the match because of the massive loss, which, including the €200,000 side bet, would reach more than €1 million.

The three-time World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner decided to continue playing and that proved to be the right decision as he managed to pull off an epic comeback with just hundreds of poker hands remaining. In the end, Galfond defeated “Venividi1993” by less than 10 big blinds.

The Rio founder went on to beat his second opponent, online player “ActionFreak”, walking away with over €260,000 in total winnings, including the €150,000 side bet. Chance Kornuth also accepted the challenge and initially built a six-figure lead over Galfond, but the latter recovered and the Chip Leader Coaching founder ended up waving the white flag with a deficit of $726,500 plus $250,000 in side bet.

Galfond also competed against Bill Perkins and Brandon Adams but both matches were cut short. Perkins and Adams were down $90,000 and $16,500 respectively when their matches against the RIO founder ended.

Galfond is essentially undefeated in the ongoing challenge. It’s interesting to see whether “Jungleman” would be able to hand him his first defeat.