Maryland logger and 21-year-old poker pro chase World Series of Poker title, $8.55M top prize

Logger, young pro chase WSOP title, $8.55M prize

LAS VEGAS — A western Maryland logger who plays no-limit Texas Hold ‘em for fun matched wits with a 21-year-old Michigan poker professional Monday night to settle the World Series of Poker main event title, worth $8.55 million.

Joe Cada of Shelby Township, Mich., entered heads-up play early Tuesday with a 2-1 chip advantage over 46-year-old Darvin Moon, who led when the nine-way final table began on Saturday.

With a stack of cash and a gold bracelet on the felt, and nearly 1,500 screaming fans in a capacity crowd at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino, Moon and Cada began a tug-of-war to end an epic tournament that began with 6,494 players in July.

“For the last four years, I’ve been waiting to play this tournament,” Cada said Monday. “Now, it means everything.”

After a 115-day break, Cada and Moon endured more than 14½ hours through 276 hands at the final table on Saturday and early Sunday when they outlasted seven others to make it to heads up play.

If Cada wins, he would become the youngest main event winner in the 40-year history of the series, breaking a record set last year by Peter Eastgate of Denmark that was previously held for two decades by 11-time gold bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth.

The chip-shifting final table marathon halted Sunday morning with Cada eliminating French poker professional Antoine Saout when a dealer turned a king on the final card of the final hand.

Before that card, Cada had a 13 percent chance to win the pot.

The pair of kings capped a run for Cada that shocked his opponents and amazed onlookers as he built from holding as little as 1 percent of the chips in play to a dominant chip lead.

“I can’t even tell you how lucky I got at that final table, but sometimes you do get lucky and that’s the thing about poker,” Cada said. “I didn’t sleep that night.”

Moon entered heads-up play with slightly fewer chips than he started the nine-way final table with, making him an underdog in chips for the first time all tournament.

When asked what his strategy was to outplay Cada, Moon said: “Win. Just win.”

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 own a computer or have an e-mail address.

Moon, who called the World Series of Poker a “dream come true,” said a title in gambling’s most prestigious event isn’t about winning extra money.

“Me and my wife were walking up the hall and she said, ‘Do you know how much money you’re guaranteed now?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, and I don’t care,’” Moon said. “I don’t even look at that. If you look at that, you’re going to go crazy.”

Second place in the tournament is worth $5.18 million.