Joe Cada Eyeing Another Final Table At World Series Of PokerPoker Pro Says He's Unsure If He'll Play Tournaments Long-Term |
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In the crazy world of poker, virtually no score is ever good enough if you’re a professional player. There’s always more poker to be played, especially if the games are good.
Michigan-based poker pro Joe Cada, who finished fifth in the Main Event on Friday evening for $2.15 million, was still alive with about 100 players left in a $1,500 no-limit hold’em event at the WSOP on Sunday. It was one of the last events on the 2018 schedule.
There were 3,120 entries in the $1,500 event, dubbed “the Closer” by the WSOP. Cada outlasted about 7,800 players in the main event to reach the final table. He won the main event in 2009 for about $8.5 million. He also won his third career bracelet in one of the first handful events of the 2018 festival, a $3,000 no-limit hold’em shootout for $226,218.
It’s been a remarkable summer for Cada, but it could get even crazier if he sits with all the chips at the end of the Closer tournament. The first-place prize was more than $600,000.
“This tournament has a fast structure, so it was something I didn’t mind jumping into before leaving Las Vegas on the 17th,” Cada said during a break in play. “It should be a fun last tournament. I felt good with how I played [at the Main Event final table], so that helps me sleep at night. Someone had to take fifth.”
The poker community was oozing with words of praise for Cada after his exit from the no-limit hold’em championship, as few in the game have two Main Event final tables on their resume since the WSOP exploded in popularity in the early 2000s.
Cada said he appreciates the kind words, but he didn’t need them to feel confident as a player. It did take him three years to make another WSOP final table after his Main Event win, but over the past six years he has firmly cemented himself as a mainstay on the poker circuit. Cada told Card Player’s Poker Stories Podcast that at one point in time “everyone thought I was bad and lucky.”
“It is cool to hear, but I always knew where I stood in poker,” Cada said. “I’ve been playing this game for a long time, since I was a teenager. I have a lot of stats on myself, and results, so I never felt like I needed to validate anything. These are just tournaments. I like cash games even more anyways. My goal is just to be happy with what I’m doing.”
Cada is 30 years of age, and he’ll be eligible for the Poker Hall of Fame at 40. However, he doesn’t like to give potential induction one day much thought, especially considering that he’s not confident he’ll still be playing tournaments then.
“Who knows, I might not even be playing tournaments anymore,” Cada said. “I might be playing just cash games at that time. We’ll see where the future takes me.”
Cada currently grinds online cash games on U.S.-facing sites, he said.
When asked if he thought Tony Miles tanked for a little too long with A-K in Cada’s bust-out hand, Cada remarked: “No, I think it was fine. There’s a lot of pressure going on at that moment, and a lot to think about. It’s a situation where I am never jamming A-Q, and he probably knows that. So he knows he’s in a flip situation most likely, and he had to come to terms and make peace with it.”
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