Today we will provide background information about three tournament crushers and two players who are considered to be the best online heads-up players in the world. Meet Dan Smith, Daniel "jungleman12" Cates, Darren Elias, David "Doc" Sands and Doug "WCGRider" Polk.
Dan Smith: Dan Smith is considered to be one of the best tournament players on the planet, he is immensely successful both live and online. He has $8.9 million in live tournament earnings and has four scores seven-figure scores. He won a $100,000 Super High Roller at the Aria Casino for $2 million, the €50,000 EPT Barcelona Super High Roller for $1.18 million, the WPT Doyle Brunson Five Diamond Poker Classic $10,300 Main Event for $1.16 million and the 2012 Aussie Millions $100,000 Challenge for $1.04 million. Smith is also successful online under the Danny98765 nickname, he has a Sunday Million, a Sunday 2nd Chance and a TCOOP title and over $600,000 in profits.
Daniel Cates: Daniel "jungleman12" Cates is considered by many to be one of the best online high stakes players ever, according to HighStakesDB he is up more than $10.2 million lifetime on Full Tilt and up $900,000 on PokerStars. Cates is famous for trash-talking both online and in the live arena and there were also reports of him throwing chips at a player after losing a big pot. Cates accepted Tom "durrr" Dwan’s heads-up challenge, which is currently in limbo as Dwan refuses to play (he is down over $1.2 million since the Challenge started), and Cates has repeatedly stated that he feels Dwan scammed him and that he is probably broke from playing the ultra-high stakes Macau games. It will be very interesting to see how the two players deal with the situation, since Dwan is also scheduled to participate in the tournament. Cates has almost $3.2 million in live tournament earnings, his biggest score was $1.77 million for his second place finish in the EPT Grand Final €100,000 Super High Roller.
Darren Elias: Darren Elias is another player who managed to transition his online success to live events. In 2014 he became the first player to win back to back World Poker Tour titles in the same season after shipping the $3,500 WPT Borgata Championship for $843,744 and following it up with a win at the WPT St. Maarten $3,500 Main Event for $127,680. Elias has total live tournament winnings of $2.9 million and according to Sharkscope he also has $1.44 million in online profits including a WCOOP title and a Sunday 2nd Chance win.
David Sands: David "Doc" Sands has $3 million in lifetime online tournament earnings, at his peak he occupied the number one spot of the PocketFives Worldwide rankings. He has an impressive list of huge scores, having won an FTOPS event, the Full Tilt $750,000 Guarantee, the Sunday 500, The Sunday Mulligan, final tabling a SCOOP event and finishing third in the Sunday Warm-up, just to mention a few of his incredible results. Sands is currently semi-retired, he took a job at a hedge fund company, but with more than $7 million in live tournament earnings, one has to wonder when the "Doc" will return to the tables full time. His biggest live score was a second place finish at the PCA $100,000 Super High Roller for $1.25 million but he also has a WPT $100,000 Super High Roller title and a WPT runner-up finish.
Doug Polk: Doug Polk is known online as "WCGRider" and according to HighstakesDB he is up almost $1.6 million on Full Tilt poker. Polk has publicly stated that he believes he is currently the best NLHE Heads-up player and the high stakes community is yet to prove his claims wrong. Polk used to compete in video games, hence the name WCGRider (WCG = World Cyber Games), and he has successfully transferred his talents to live tournaments, he has almost $4.5 million in live tournament earnings including a win at the Aria $100,000 Super High Roller for $1.6 million.
