Joe Cada Wins 2009 WSOP Main Event

Over 6,000 players entered the 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event, and 21-year-old Joe Cada has outlasted them all, becoming the youngest player in history to win the World Series of Poker Main Event.

Cada, representing PokerStars, the site through which he won his seat in the main event through a $40 satellite, plays heads-up poker online every day, and has done so since watching Chris Moneymaker come from obscurity and, doing the same, take the 2004 championship. The runner-up for the event was chip leader at the beginning and the complete underdog in so far as skill and experience are concerned, Darvin Moon. But Cada had nothing but great things to say about Moon, complimenting there at the table for his heads-up play.

Moon may have had the chip lead at the start, but he didn’t retain it for very long, and had to fight tooth and nail to stay in the game throughout the entire final table. Cada, known on the felt as “The Kid”, was one of the shorter stacks at the start, becoming the Comeback Kid at the end to win $8.5 million.

Phil Ivey, meanwhile, had all eyes on him, going for a different sort of world history than Cada, Ivey’s for being the most successful poker player of all time, and showed in several hands why he still deserves that title, even if the cards did have him busting out at 7th place.

Last year Peter Eastgate beat Phil Hellmuth’s record and became the youngest player ever to win the WSOP main event, but only held that record one year. When Cada sat down across from Eastgate during earlier main event play, he said he’d be taking that record away from him. And he apparently wasn’t kidding.