21 year old becomes the youngest ever WSOP Champ
Unbelievable!!! Joseph Cada won the Main Event of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) two days ago and he’s only 21 years old! And he smashed two records in the WSOP’s 40 year history: he’s the youngest player to ever win the Main Event and it was the longest final table ever. Cada took home a whopping $8.55 million in prize money.
Cada, online whiz kid, had to overcome fellow American player, Darvin Moon, your regular guy-next-door type who’s a logger from western Maryland and more than twice the age of Cada. At first I thought well this just goes to show that playing endless games of online poker really does improve your game as this has been Cada’s strategy. He said that he regularly plays about a dozen tournaments at a time on time. But then I read that Moon hasn’t ever even played a single had of online poker and in fact doesn’t even own a computer!! Although I wouldn’t feel too sorry for Moon – he still won $5.18 mil for taking second place.
It was a gruelling final table taking more than 14 hours, 364 hands of heads-up Texas Hold’em poker and finishing in the wee hours of the morning. Moon and Cada swapped leads several times in the final three hours when it was just the two of them left at the table that had started with nine. At one point, Cada only held 1 per cent of the chips in play and was very nearly eliminated. However, Cada held his nerve under pressure and fought back. Ultimately, Cada defeated Moon with pocket nines against QJ in what is certainly to become one of the most memorable moments in the WSOP’s history.
Peter Eastgate was the previous youngest winner and won last year’s event when he was 22 years old. Cada is apparently 340 days younger than Eastgate at the time of winning. Prior to the new record set by Eastgate, it was held for 2 decades by Phil Hellmuth who never thought the record could be broken.
Cada has already declared his intentions to win the tournament back to back.
Here’s Cada reflecting on his final table experience ….
[...] me describe the WSOP first up which btw was just won by a 21 year old whiz kid in case you missed it. It’s an annual even that takes place every year in Las Vegas. The WSOP [...]