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A 21-year-old Michigan
poker professional who chose cards over college won the
World Series of Poker main event in Las Vegas, winning $8.55
million and becoming the youngest player to win the
tournament in its 40-year history.
Joe Cada of Shelby
Township, Mich., turned over a pair of nines early after
46-year old Darvin Moon called his all-in wager with a
suited queen-jack, setting up an about-even race for most of
the chips on the table.
 But a board of two sevens,
a king, an eight and a deuce didn't connect with either
player's cards and gave Cada the win.
"I ran really well and I
never really thought this was possible," Cada said. "It was
one of those dreams and I'm thankful it came true."
The hand abruptly ended a
final table that saw Moon, a logger from western Maryland,
bounce back to a dominant chip lead after being down 2-1 in
chips to start the night.
"I knew if I could catch, I
got him," Moon said of the final hand. "I just took a shot."
Cada broke a record for the
tournament's youngest winner set last year by Peter Eastgate
of Denmark. Cada is 340 days younger than Eastgate.
The record was previously
held for two decades by 11-time gold bracelet winner Phil
Hellmuth, who posed for pictures with Cada after the win.
He also posed with his
mother, Ann Cada, a dealer at MotorCity Casino Hotel in
downtown Detroit.
"My baby," Ann Cada said as
she approached her son with cameras snapping.
When asked what's next for
him after reaching the pinnacle for poker so early in his
career, Cada said: "To win it back-to-back."
Moon and Cada traded the
lead several times in 88 hands spanning nearly three hours
of play, with one 20-minute break.
Moon erased Cada's lead in
12 hands, revealing a pair of queens during a showdown to
rake in a pot worth millions of chips. Cada shook his head
after he lost and briefly stood up from the table, walking
over and chatting with two of his supporters.
After some chip-shifting,
Cada was ahead by less than 4 million chips after 52 hands,
with 194.8 million chips in play.
But Moon stormed to nearly
a 100 million-chip lead after the break, visibly frustrating
Cada and leaning on him to make tougher decisions.
Fortunes changed when Moon
pounced on a board with two 10s, a nine and a five to put
Cada's entire tournament at risk. After a sip of bottled
water and several minutes of thinking, Cada called the bet
and flipped over a nine for a pair.
Moon held a straight draw
but didn't hit his hand on the river, giving the lead back
to Cada and drawing roars from the crowd.
"I should have went all-in
on the flop. He made a phenomenal call," Moon said. "That's
why he's the champion."
Moon won $5.18 million for
second place.
"I only play good when my
back's against the wall," said Cada, who was nearly ousted
from the tournament on Saturday when he held about 1 percent
of the chips in play after 123 hands.
The players traded chips
atop a table with a stack of cash and a gold bracelet on its
felt, and in front of nearly 1,500 screaming fans in a
capacity crowd at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino.
Their tug-of-war ended an
epic tournament that began with 6,494 players in July.
After a 115-day break, Cada
and Moon endured more than 14 1/2 hours through 276 hands at
the final table on Nov. 7 and 8, when they outlasted seven
others to make it to heads-up play on Nov. 10.
Unlike Cada, who said he
regularly plays about a dozen tournaments at a time online
or three at a time in heads-up cash games, Moon hasn't
played a single hand of online poker. He doesn't even own a
computer or have an e-mail address. |
