Joe Cada is a professional poker player from Michigan, best known as the winner of the Main Event at the 2009 WSOP.
Born in 1987, Cada began playing online poker around age 16. Although he was too young to play in casinos in the United States while he was younger than 21, he could in Canada and could also play online. Even though his mother was a blackjack dealer, his parents weren't crazy about him playing poker seriously.
Cada had been a regular online poker player for several years prior to winning the live WSOP main event, playing thousands of hands per day at PokerStars under the User ID jcada99. He also plays under the names jcada99 and Joe Cada on the Full Tilt Poker website, and JCADA99 on Absolute Poker. He had reportedly already earned over half a million dollars in online games before his big win, although he had a big downswing that necessitated him getting staked for the WSOP.
Cada had already cashed twice at the 2009 WSOP before playing the main event, including a 17th place finish out of 2,095 players in the $1,500 No Limit Hold'em, earning $21,533.
Prior to his main event victory, Cada earned a $1 million contract with PokerStars that paid for his travels, and some of his buy-ins. This contract with Pokerstars resulted from an interview on ESPN with Phil Gordon where he expressed an interest in signing with Pokerstars. His agent had already received offers for him from UltimateBet and PokerHost.
In the main event, Cada was the tournament chip leader after day 1C. At some time later on in the tournament, Cada's stack was reduced to only 4x the big blind and a little over 1% of the combined chips in play. This happened after Jeff Shulman went all-in with A-K and Cada called with A-J. Cada was eventually able to recover and become the chip leader going into the final heads-up play. He gave up the chip lead again during the final heads-up duel with Darvin Moon before winning.
When Cada won the main event at the age of 21 years, 11 months, he surpassed Peter Eastgate as the youngest main event champion in history. After his win, he made many appearances in the media, such as CNN, CBS News, CNBC, Late Show With David Letterman, numerous ESPN outlets plus a visit to WWE RAW. In a Time interview, Cada expressed his support for legislation to legalize online gambling.
Cada has 1 WSOP bracelet, 3 WSOP cashes (all during 2009) and total live tournament winnings exceed $8,550,000.
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HPG ADMIN on February 27, 2013