Cates is in a Rush

As we arrived the turn was already on the board () and Jonathan Duhamel had bet 25,000 from the small blind. Action was on Daniel Cates who was talking to himself.

"You can have ace-ten, or king-nine" is what we heard, but a lot of other words were coming from his mouth which we couldn't really hear well, let alone place into context.

Cates was really pondering, and with a stack of 63,600 in front of him he clearly had a tough decision. The player in seat one asked the dealer to call for time. The brush came over and Cates asked him a question even before the brush had told him that he would have one minute left to act on his hand.

"Am I allowed to ask you how many hours till the money?" asked Cates to the brush. The brush on duty didn't really seem to understand the question, or at least thought he had misheard Cates. "Am I allowed to ask you how many hours till the money?" Cates repeated.

The brush assured Cates that he could. "But first I'm going to tell you that you have one minute to act on your hand" the brush continued.

While the brush stared at the clock Cates then asked the actual question again: "How long do you think it will take before we're in the money?" The brush, probably not faced by that question on a daily basis, stumbled a little bit and eventually answered, "We'll probably be in the money somewhere tomorrow afternoon."

As soon as the brush answered, Cates splashed all of his chips in. Duhamel reluctantly called, not happy with the situation. The Canadian PokerStars Team Pro remarked that the brush shouldn't give that kind of information in the middle of the hand, but it wouldn't change what followed.

Duhamel turned over and Cates smashed his on the table. Cates seemed very excited and awaited the river before really celebrating. Nobody was celebrating with him though, and Duhamel's face only got grumpier as the hit the felt to ensure Cates' double up.

"That really was a big deciding factor," Cates commented on the somewhat unusual question, "if I was going to have to sit here for another $%^!@# lifetime..."

Duhamel still has a playable stack with about 57,000. Meanwhile Cates might be in for some more hours of play as he now has just under 140,000.