Top Crazy Poker Situations of 2025

Weird But Creative WPT Events

In October 2025, The Lodge in Texas hosted perhaps the strangest experiment the poker community has ever seen: two wild events at the WPT Prime Lodge.The first event was a streamed $5/10 cash game titled Heart Attack Poker where various different WPT ambassadors and content creators competed against each other while being strapped to heart rate monitors in the club.

The second event was the Mystery Bounty Wildcard Chaos tournament with a $300 buy-in and a $50,000 guaranteed prize pool where players could randomly get power-ups, penalties and monetary prizes:

Some of the chaotic moments of this tourney were quite enjoyable, such as when a female poker player won a $10K seat in the lottery.

But when the stack swap happened, players were a little confused by how unfair they felt that aspect of the lottery was:

Ultimately, the winner of this event with 322 entries was Thien Nguyen, who received a $6,325 prize.

Daniel Cates: Detective & Debt Collector

2025 became the year of Daniel “Jungleman” Cates’ Crusade Against Scumbags and Debtors — but he carried it out in his own unique way.

For example, in August, he announced that he was working on creating “a model” that would help people pay off their debts conveniently:

His fight after that turned out to be peculiar — while working primarily outside the public eye, he shared results on Twitter from time to time, occasionally issuing some cryptic posts, such as:

• If you’re a scumbag (or not) I’ll take you to church and praise Jesus with you
• One anon-accused player has paid 30k of their debt (without any other details).
• Update – a player from the list reached out and began making payments enough to get removed from the list (the wide public never saw this list)
• For all of you guys scummin out there and think you’ll get away with it, I will find you and I *am* hunting you down. DETECTIVE DAN is on the case!

However, in the summer and fall, Dan did out several people on social media, including:

• Mike Segal — without revealing how the situation was eventually resolved (as well as when he called Cord Garcia a scammer and asked to settle his debts — just “he promises to make things right” — and that’s all, folks).
• Justin Swilling — the only known case where a player has dealt with his debts for sure, which Dan reported 2.5 months later.
• Bryan Oulton and Sandy Swartzbaugh — without a clear explanation of his role in this situation.
• Lukas Pazmas — without any evidence, but with a statement that this guy denies arbitration and guilt.
• Ryan Gruczka — with a discrepancy between what Dan accuses him of and the “evidence” attached to the post.

However, the content of his outing posts — as well as highly emotional reaction to debtors and scammers who avoid paying victims — turned the crusade into more of an attempt to boost Cates’ reputation in a public eye— especially when he changed his name to Dan Catesus on Instagram and alternated exposing with promotions of his Jungleverse and DoJo Live.

Maurice Hawkings’ Boxing Kerfuffle

As of December 2025, U.S. poker player Maurice Hawkins held the most WSOP Circuit rings in the world with 19, but also a controversial reputation due to his attitude and difficulty repaying debts.

So when news broke of the attack on him during a private poker game, the natural reaction in the poker community was to assume that the people he owed money to had finally gotten around to teaching him a lesson.

However, it turned out that the physical altercation involving Maurice had nothing to do with his debts. According to his post on X, the situation unfolded as follows:

But other participants of this game presented two different versions of what happened.One explanation came from player Tray Rock who initially posted the full video of the situation on Instagram — in their words:

Well, another player, who commented anonymously on this story, stated that in reality everything was completely different:

Maurice running his mouth about how good of a boxer he is, poking and talking shit to another player who had enough.

Additionally, in the full video of this boxing match, you can hear the opponent tell Maurice: «You wanted to box? We boxed!».

Whatever the reasons, the dispute has caused a rift in the poker community. While some players were happy that Maurice got what he deserved, others were upset by the positive reaction to violence in poker and the lack of condemnation.All in all, this boxing hype has become one of the craziest moments of the year — as if 2025 didn’t already have enough scandals.