Joe Cada

Joe Cada was born in Shelby Township, Michigan on November 18, 1987. He currently holds the record as the youngest player in history to win the World Series of Poker Main Event. Also known as “The Kid” and jcada99 online, his mother is a blackjack dealer at the Motor City Casino is Detroit and his Father is a victim of the current recession after being laid off from his job in the auto industry. He also has a big brother named Jerome.

Cada began playing poker at the young age of 16 online with accounts that he shared with his brother. He didn’t do so well at first and lost all the money in his accounts. He finally registered for his own account at PartyPoker and began playing. Even though he wasn’t old enough to legally play in the US, he was legally able to play in neighboring Canada at the age of 19. He took a short break after a losing streak and then began playing again in a casino in Windsor, Ontario, which is just across the Canadian border.

Getting better and better with practice, Cada managed to make enough money to take on tournaments in the Bahamas and Costa Rica. When he became old enough for poker in the US, he registered for an account at PokerStars under the name jcada99. Soon he was playing around 2000 hands each day regularly making good money. Before winning the WSOP in 2009, he earned a total of $551,788 playing online. Although he was having fun making money with poker, Cada still attended  college but realized pretty quickly that he wanted to make poker his career and eventually quit school to take it on full time.

After suffering some pretty big losses, Cada couldn’t afford to buy-in to the World Series of Poker, so he made a deal with two poker pro financers Eric Haber and Cliff Josephy to pay the fee in exchange for half of whatever he won. Little did he know that he would be winning a massive $8.55 million dollars and become the youngest champion ever of the main event. While at the 2009 World Series of Poker, Cada placed in three money finishes of which all were No Limit Texas Hold’em events including his big main event win with a playing field totaling over six and a half thousand.

This young man is now a millionaire thanks to the World Series of Poker. He has a three story house in Chesterfield Township, Michigan and is planning on buying another one in Las Vegas, Nevada with his tournament winnings. Every Sunday, Cada hosts an online poker night with 15 of his friends where they get together at his house and play poker online. Around 100 of his friends were seen cheering Cada on at the World Series of Poker which he says was very helpful to him.

Cada is also a supporter of legalizing online poker in the US and expressed his views in a Time interview saying, “I support the right to play poker online. Poker isn’t gambling. It’s a hobby, an activity, a game. It’s not about luck-it’s about logic, decision making, math. We all should be able to play poker on the web if we want to, and I believe that making it illegal strips us of our rights. This is an important issue, and hopefully we’ll see it resolved soon.”