Final Table Takedown -- Joe Cada

Joe Cada, from Shelby Township, Michigan, started playing poker at around the age of 15 with his family at home. After his father pointed out that the game was particularly suited to Joe’s academic strengths (mathematics and logic), Joe quickly grew to love it and started playing online.

After getting his start online, he began playing live cash games at the Windsor Casino in Ontario, Canada. Then, he entered tournaments in the Bahamas and Costa Rica. Always very competitive (he played for a championship club soccer team, and still plays for a club team today), Joe wasn’t happy until he was playing for high stakes online.

In 2009, having turned 21, he was able to enter the World Series of Poker, where he cashed three times and won the main event. His win makes him the youngest main-event champion of all time.

Event 2009 World Series of Poker main event
Players in the Event 6,494
Buy-in $10,000
First Prize $8,546,435
Finish First

Hand No. 1
Joe Cada – 111,600,000 * Darvin Moon* – 83,200,000
Blinds: 500,000-1,000,000
Antes: 150,000
Players Remaining: 2

Hand No. 1
Key Concepts: Determining hand ranges; position; reads; interpreting bet sizes

Craig Tapscott: You’ve been able to watch Moon’s play for some time now. What is the game plan?

Joe Cada: My plan was to play in position whenever possible. I wanted to build pots when I was in position, but I also had to try to maintain pot control, as Darvin had a tendency to check-raise quite a bit. In short, my plan was to build pots in position, and exercise pot control when out of position.

CT: What did you think his weaknesses were, and how were you going to exploit them?

JC: At first, I would have said that Darvin’s inexperience might have been a weakness, but I feel that in the end, it perhaps helped him. It certainly kept me and a lot of the other players guessing much of the time. That aside, he did tend to call a lot when out of position, and I felt that I could exploit that. He also had a tendency to overbet quite a bit, so I was hoping that I could use mathematics to my advantage, as well.

CT: What kinds of adjustments did you have to make, as Moon seemed hard to read and also was hyperaggressive in strange spots?

JC: Darvin was definitely tough to read. His aggressiveness made it expensive for me to see what kinds of hands he was playing. In order to combat this, I started checking behind with marginal hands. I wanted to control the pot size so that I wouldn’t be put in an awkward spot after leading with a marginal hand. I also started check-raising more often, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to take a lot of heat with his own marginal hands.

Cada raises to 2,500,000 with the K J from the button. Moon calls.
Flop: J 6 5 (pot: 5,300,000)
Moon checks. Cada bets 3,500,000. Moon raises to 8,500,000.

JC: At this point, it will be hard to extract a lot of value out of hands that are worse than mine.

CT: Can you refine his hand range?

JC: If he has a very strong hand, like a set or two pair, I’m in really bad shape. Darvin had been check-raising a lot, so I figured there was a good chance that he could be bluffing.

Cada calls.
Turn: Q (pot: 22,300,000)
Moon checks.

CT: Why the check if he wants to continue representing a strong hand?

JC: This was very suspicious to me. If he was bluffing on the flop, I would expect him to bluff the queen, as well. I decide to check behind. This is because I’m probably going to extract a river value-bet only if he has a worse hand than mine. I wanted to see what kind of action the river would bring.

Cada checks.
River: 2 (pot: 22,300,000)
*Moon bets 10,000,000. *

JC: I felt that I had to call, given the odds and the line he had taken in the hand.

Cada calls. Moon flips over the Q 8. Moon wins the pot of 42,300,000.

Hand No. 2
Joe Cada – 54,150,000 Darvin Moon – 140,450,000
Blinds: 600,000-1,200,000
Antes: 200,000
Players Remaining: 2

Hand No. 2
Key Concepts: Pot control; logic-based reads

Cada raises to 3,000,000 from the button with the J 9. Moon calls.
Flop: 10 9 5 (pot: 6,400,000)
Moon checks. Cada checks.

CT: Is it worth taking a stab at it with second pair?

JC: I think this is a good flop to check behind, because I’m not going to get a whole lot of value from my hand by betting. Also, Darvin likes to check-raise a lot. If I bet and he chooses to check-raise me, it puts me in a bad position — especially due to the size of the raises he’s been putting in. Checking disguises my hand, and in my eyes, not too many turn cards are going to hurt me.

Turn: 10 (pot: 6,400,000)
Moon checks.

JC: The turn put a flush draw out there, but the 10 was a card that I was happy to see there.

CT: Why is that?

JC: My read was that I had the best hand on the flop, so that 10 wouldn’t affect me. Also, the fact that a 10 peeled off made my original read (that he didn’t have a 10) all the more likely to be accurate.

CT: Your 9 is probably good, so …

JC: Right. I can pretty much assume that my 9 is good, due to the fact that a lot of our hands were checked to river. If he did indeed have a 10 here, I felt that he would have to bet for value.

Cada bets 3,000,000. Moon raises all in.

CT: Wow. What could he have with such a big overbet?

JC: I might have expected the check-raise, but definitely not all in. The size of the bet had me curious. I then calculated his hand range, which I believed to be J-8, 8-7, Q-J, a flush draw, or even a sporadic stone-cold bluff (if he thought I was weak from checking the flop). I had seen him do this before. I figured that a better hand (other than a 10) would check-call or raise less for value, or try to trap me. So, I opted to put my main event at risk, and it ended up being the right call.

Cada calls. Moon flips over the 8 7.
River: 3 (pot: 108,300,000)
Cada wins the pot of 108,300,000.

CT: Joe, give us some keys to heads-up play, since you’ve honed those skills over thousands of hands on the Internet.

JC: I’m lucky, in that I’ve been playing high-stakes heads-up matches for a few years now. One thing that it teaches you is how to make reads without the use of physical tells. Instead, you have to look at betting patterns. In Darvin’s case, I’m not going to lie — he was a pretty tough read. Darvin’s the type of player who doesn’t necessarily put you on a range of hands, but instead decides whether you’re strong or weak, and then bets accordingly. I could tell when he thought I was weak, because he would check-raise or overbet. I combated that by trying to control the pot size.

Finally, something I got from playing online is pushing my edges. In this hand, I made a call with a hand that wasn’t terribly strong, but I knew that I was ahead. At another point in the tournament, I might not make that call, but when heads up, there is no more “survival.” It’s time to push the edges and close the door.