The single story that has consumed the online poker community since Sunday has been the ongoing investigation into the so-called “Portuguese Poker Prodigy” Jose Macedo, known online as “Girah”. After a stunning revelation Sunday night by other members of the high-stakes poker community, the poker world discovered that the Portuguese Poker Prodigy had in fact been scamming other players; gaining their trust as a peer and then hole-carding them while he watched them play online poker!
As more details emerged it became quite apparent that this wasn’t “Girah’s” only transgression in poker, and many started to look at two of his closest poker friends, high-stakes pros Haseeb “DogIsHead” Qureshi and Daniel “jungleman12” Cates to see if they had any role in the scams being perpetrated by Girah.
After a few days of non-stop debate and evidence gathering at 2+2, Cates and Qureshi decided to speak to Bluff Magazine in separate interviews to explain their side of the story and what role they played in the numerous scams and falsehoods that were uncovered.
The consensus on 2+2 even before the interviews was that Cates was likely only a periphery player in the whole saga –which his blasé interview only seemed to corroborate. On the other hand the 2+2 community was virtually unanimous in its feelings that DogIsHead played a much deeper role in everything Girah.
While not coming clean and answering all of the questions put before him, Qureshi did admit to purposely chip-dumping to Girah, playing on Girah’s account, and a number of other minor offenses like lying about editing blogs and such for the teenager.
Soon after the interview was posted at Bluff Magazine, Qureshi posted a long blog postat his Cardrunners blog –where he was let go as a poker coach when the scandal broke—stating that he would be leaving the poker world and backpacking through Europe to get his head straight. There were no final admissions of guilt, and very little in the way of a true apology in the blog post, and Haseeb Qureshi’s reputation will be forever tarnished in the poker world for his role in this ugly, sordid, affair.
However, this is likely not the end of this drama, as the online poker community still has many unanswered questions, and Cates agreed to do another interview, this time with the 2+2 community, where he will likely face much tougher questions, from people far more familiar with the situation.
And then there is of course Girah; a 20 year-old supposed poker pro, who will likely be black-balled from the poker community, and as many have suggested could possibly face criminal charges for his actions –especially if more information comes to light.
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