From Internet Heads-Up Specialist to WSOP World Champion

By Katie Lindsay

When Peter Eastgate broke Phil Hellmuth’s record of youngest World Series Main Event champion ever in 2008 at the age of 22, observers thought that record would stand for a long, long time. After all, Hellmuth had held it for almost two decades.

But just a year later, Joe Cada shattered it. At 21 years and 357 days okd, on November 10, Cada became the youngest WSOP Main Event champion in history.

While Joe wasn’t a household name prior to the WSOP, he wasn’t new to the game, either. Cada has been playing online for years and was a champion in the making.

Growing up in Shelby Charter Township, Michigan, Cada was competitive as a child.

"My whole family played soccer and I started playing when I was 4 years old. When I turned 8 I began going on the road for games. It was a great experience growing up as my team won nationals. I ended up playing soccer till I was about 15."

A Different Kind of Sport

Around that same time Cada picked up poker and started playing with friends.

"We would just hang out, watch TV and play for fun. It was during the time that Moneymaker won, so everybody was playing back then."

A couple years later Cada began playing online and went straight to cash games.

"Once I was old enough, online was very convenient to play. I started playing really small, like $0.25 and $0.50 blinds and I happened to have a knack for it and I slowly made my way up in the cash games."

After having a successful run with cash games for a few years, Cada decided to play a tournament one day and entered in the $750k Guarantee on Full Tilt.

"I happened to win the event and $150,000, so I found out rather quickly that tournaments can be pretty lucrative!"

Cada took to this newfound part of the game and started zoning in on his tournament play.

"I had a lot of friends who played professionally, and I used a bunch of the learning tools online like CardRunners and other training sites. I also learned from experience and went to better players for advice."

Hand analysis with friends was the catalyst for his growing success with the game.

"After the day we would go over hands that put us in tricky spots. We also used programs like Poker Stove and that helped tremendously."

Thanks to all of his preparing online, Cada found himself ready to play more live tournaments and spent his summer participating in the World Series of Poker side events and another tournament series at the Venetian.

"I think I played about 16-18 tournaments and I played some Venetian Deep Stack tournaments, too. I cashed in two tournaments, but one of them was very upsetting because it was a $1,500 event with 2,100 players and on Day 3 I was third in chips with 17 to go and then ElkY (Bertrand Grospellier) two-outed me on the river."

Got Backing

Not satisfied with just a couple cashes, Cada moved on and decided to have his backers buy him into the Main Event of the WSOP in early July, this time hoping for a better result.

"I ended my first day (Day 1D) as the chip leader of that day. It was pretty smooth early on. I didn’t really play any big pots at all. It was basically smooth sailing the whole way. I got really sick on Day 3 and Day 4, so that was really rough for me, but I got a lot better during the later stages."

After making the final table, Cada wasn’t thrilled about the delay.

"I wasn’t too happy about it at first during the whole process, but whatever is good for poker is fine with me. I spent the time off going to different live tournaments in Los Angeles, Barcelona, London, and I continued to play online a lot."

While many players at the final table opted to hire coaches to help them during the break, Cada was the one doing the coaching, assisting some of his friends who play professionally as well.

"I went to a couple friends for advice on my play every so often, but I didn’t hire anyone to coach me. I actually even turned down doing a video for CardRunners."

During the time off, Cada also prepared his strategy against his eight other opponents.

"Basically, I decided to go into the final table planning to adjust to how the players were playing. I knew they were going to come in with different strategies than the way they had played before. I watched as much footage as I could and got as much hand history as I could on the other players. Kevin Schaffel went deep at the Legends of Poker and I know people at the tournament who played with him, so I went over hand histories with those friends and I prepared myself as much as I could. I knew things would change once the final table actually started, though."

Opponents Changed Gears

Change they did, Cada was right that his opponents would be playing differently.

"I thought most of them played a lot tighter and Darvin Moon played off his image. Once I got there I was hoping to chip up nicely like I did throughout the beginning of the tournament and not have to play an all-in because I was never all-in prior to the final table. But it didn’t work out that way. I got very lucky and I have never seen anything like it before. I was very fortunate for that."

Once Cada got heads-up with Moon, he once again had to readjust his strategy.

"My goal was to play almost all my hands in position and play small-ball poker and chip away at him, but unfortunately Darvin didn’t want to play small ball. He put me in a lot of tough spots, made the pots really big and did a lot of overbetting. He played great and really put me to the test. He surprised me tremendously for someone who has never played heads-up. It definitely didn’t seem that way."

Online Grinding a Big Plus

Cada gave a lot of credit for his win to his years of grinding out poker online.

"[Being an online pro] helped me a lot, just having all that experience under my belt. Just taking certain situations and having been in those situations a number of times and knowing your stack size compared to the blinds. A lot of people look at the average and they kinda start freaking out and push the action a little more but the average chip stack doesn’t really mean anything. It’s your stack size compared to the blinds."

After almost four months of waiting, Joe Cada finally had the title of 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event Champion and he’s still not quite sure what is in store for himself.

"This media storm has been very different for me; I’m not used to it. I’m more of the shy type, so I don’t know how it will all turn out."

One spot on that media storm was an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman.

"I was more nervous doing his show than playing the final table! It was real fun, though, he’s a really funny guy, and it was great to be on the show."

As everything starts to slow down, Cada plans to get back on the tour, as well as the online grind.

"My next tournament is the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in the Bahamas. As soon as the media stuff dies down, I’ll be trying to get back online, playing tournaments on Sundays as always. I’m also going to be playing the 5 Diamond Classic at the Bellagio in December along with the Million Dollar Challenge in L.A. for PokerStars’ new show. I hope I can go deep in another major tournament and win another one. Also, I want to compete in the higher cash games."

When asked what it was like winning the Big One at such an incredibly early age, his answer was simple.

"It’s a dream come true," he said. "It means everything to me."