Joe Cada Talks 2009 Main Event Victory & Confidence in Poker on 888Ride
Another World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event champion shared his secrets to success with David Tuchman during 888poker's 888Ride segment after 2013 and 2015 champs Ryan Riess and Joe McKeehen did so earlier this summer. This time around it was 2009 winner Joe Cada, who at the time was the youngest Main Event champion at 21 years old.
Cada was far from a one-tournament wonder. With three other bracelets and nearly $15 million in Hendon Mob earnings, the Michigan grinder has proven he is a force to be reckoned with in the decade and a half since his historic Main Event victory.
Cada Reflects on Historic Main Event Run
Cada had no idea he'd be a tournament legend when he came to Las Vegas for his first WSOP in 2009, which saw him earn two cashes before shipping the Main Event for $8.5 million. In fact, his friends had more confidence in Cada's tournament game than he did.
“I was making a lot of money (playing cash online) when I was 18 to 20, 21 years old," Cada told Tuchman. "So when I went out to Vegas, all my friends had this expectation for me that I didn’t quite have because I knew how MTTs work.”
Speaking about one of the most memorable hands of the final table, where Cada raised all in with pocket threes during five-handed play and cracked the jacks of Jeff Shulman, Cada said it just felt right.
“It just one of those spots where you’re five-handed, the blinds are hitting you a bunch, and you find a spot where you can chip up a ton, a lot of times you’re going to get a flip situation when the guy’s range is very narrow," Cada said. "And I just thought it was a good spot. And he tanked a while with jacks.”
“It’s poker. You run into it sometimes, and you can’t be afraid to take the spots or take the risks.”
If luck played a role in Cada's 2009 victory, he proved his worth to the poker world nearly a decade later when he won two bracelets in a single summer before finishing fifth in the 2018 Main Event for $2.1 million.
“I always had that respect for myself in poker," he said. "Like, that was the one thing that I was very confident in life about was poker.”
Cada even offered up some advice for poker players playing the $10,000 buy-in Main Event for the first time.
“Obviously, the clear-cut mistake that I’ve seen the most in all the years that I’ve played the Main Event is people start doing things that they typically wouldn’t do … I think the most important thing about the Main Event, you just focus on every individual hand. Just focus on the people at the table.”
Head to YouTube to see the full interview between Cada and Tuchman.
