Joe Cada Wins 2009 WSOP

On hand number 88 of a topsy-turvy heads up match, Joe Cada won a race with a pair of nines to defeat Darvin Moon’s Qd Jd. The board ran out 8c 2c 7s Kh 7c giving Cada two pair, nines and sevens. In preflop action, Cada was on the button and he raised to 3 million with 600k/1.2m blinds and 200k antes. Moon reraised to 8 million and Cada thought briefly before raising all-in. Moon quickly called off about 70 million chips to put his tournament at risk. If Cada had lost the pot, he would have been crippled. With his victory, Cada pockets a cool $8.55 million dollars while Moon takes home the runner-up spot and $5.18 million.

While Cada started with a 2-to-1 chip advantage at the start of heads up play, he quickly ran into trouble as Moon played a hyper-aggressive style that was, largely, effective against Cada’s style of play. Here is a recap of the big hands that took place before the final hand.

With stacks around even, Moon had the button and raised to 3 million which was called by Cada in the big blind. The flop came down Jc 4h 2d. Cada checked and Moon bet 4 million. Cada called to make the pot around 14 million total. The turn was a Qh and Cada checked to Moon who bet 6 million. Cada opted to check raise to 16.75 million and Moon called — putting the pot at nearly 50 million chips. The river was the 5c and Cada, who had checked the flop and turn, lead out with 35 million chips. Moon contemplated the bet for a few minutes before deciding to lay down his hand on the final board of Jc 4h 2d Qh 5c. This put Cada up 120 million to 72 million.

Moon grinded Cada back down with a few more decent size pots to get back near even. Soon after, Cada snapped off a Moon bluff on a busted flush draw by calling a river raise with Js Th on a Td Ah 3h 6c 4s board in which Moon had Jh 5h. After that pot, Moon started, once again, to grind chips away from Cada a few million at a time. Moon was consistently betting a large percentage of the pot on flops and Cada usually backed down. After about 20 hands of aggressive play from Darvin, he managed to get back to even chips at around 95 million each. The players went on a 25 minute break almost dead even in chips.

Shortly after the break, Moon went on a mini-run with two medium sized pots to get up to 122 million to Cada’s 73 million. To this point in the tournament, this was Moon’s all-time chip high and the momentum in the match appeared to be swinging his way.

In the next crucial pot, Joe Cada had the button and made a standard preflop raise to 3 million chips. Moon called and the flop came down 3h 5d Ac. As he’d been doing much of the night, Moon bet 5 million chips out of position into a pot that was about 6.5 million. Cada had largely been folding to these bets but this hand he opted to raise to 13 million total leaving 8 million for Moon to call. Moon cut out enough chips to put in a raise to 25 million but Cada quickly folded. This pot was good enough to put Moon into a commanding chip lead with around 145 million to around 50 million.

After a number of uneventful pots, Cada four-bet shoved preflop after a standard 3 million opening raise and a standard 8 million reraise from Moon. Moon decided to fold to Cada’s all-in raise which brought Cada back a bit to a 2-1 chip disadvantage. Not much later, Cada went all-in yet again but the outcome was quite different for both players. Cada opened to 3 million on the button and Moon called to see a flop of Tc 5d 9h. The flop was checked and the turn came Td. Cada took a 3 million chip stab at the 6.5 million chip pot and, shocking the crowd, Moon quickly went all-in in a large overbet of the pot forcing Cada to make a tough decision for his tournament. After going in the tank for a few minutes, Cada called with Jh 9d for second pair. Moon flipped over 7s 8s for an up and down straight draw with one card to come. Needing a 6 or a J for a straight and the right to be called World Series of Poker champion, Moon missed the river when a 3h came off the deck. This gave the chip lead back to Cada as he faded the seven outer.

With the stacks at 108 million to Cada and 86 million to Moon, the players played a few more medium sized pots before the fateful final coinflip that awarded the Main Event title to Joe Cada. With his victory, Cada becomes the youngest main event winner ever at the tender age of 21. In the coming days and weeks, we’ll be back with more information, interviews and analysis of the 2009 World Series of Poker.