Updated on 23 Feb 26 by
Barry Carter
Poker Expert

Jungleman loses biggest pot in televised poker history...

...but he still wins €13 million in his heads-up match against 'Monarch' at the Onyx Super High Roller Series in Cyprus.

Poker

Move over, Triton, there is a new High Roller tour in town. 

We have already seen some huge prize pool tournaments in the Onyx Super High Roller Series at the Merit Royal Diamond in Cyprus, but last night we had one of the biggest heads-up matches in poker history. 

Daniel "Jungleman" Cates played Finnish e-sports entrepreneur Ossi "The Monarch" Ketola in a series of seven-figure heads-up matches. The stakes started at €1 million buy-ins and went all the way up to €6 million. 

Cates won the first match and the final three, taking his overall profit to €13 million across 12 hours.

Unbelievable stakes

Arguably, it led to the largest pot in televised poker history, if you consider it to count in the somewhat freezeout format of the match. Ketola went all-in with two pair on the river for what became a €7.7 million pot; it would have been the world's first eight-figure pot if Cates had called. 

The stakes were so high that event organiser Rob Yong took to Twitter to address any scepticism that the stakes were real:

The stream has already attracted 200,000 views and is looking like Rob Yong has created healthy competition for the Triton series.

You can see the whole match below:

This is how the matches went down:

Match Buy-In Winner
Match 1 €1,000,000 Jungleman
Match 2 €1,000,000 Monarch
Match 3 €3,000,000 Monarch
Match 4 €5,000,000 Jungleman
Match 5 €5,000,000 Jungleman
Match 6 €6,000,000 Jungleman

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Poker Expert

Barry Carter is the editor of PokerStrategy.com and the co-author of The Mental Game of Poker 1 & 2, Poker Satellite Strategy, PKO Poker Strategy, Endgame Poker Strategy, GTO Poker Simplified, Mystery Bounty Poker Strategy and Beyond GTO. In 2025, he won the Global Poker Awards for Best Book and Twitter Personality of the Year.