Joe Cada scoffs at fatigue. Fatigue isn’t even a word in Joe Cada’s vocabulary. On Friday night, he was eliminated in fifth place in the 2018 World Series of Poker Main Event. One would think someone would want at least a short break after that, but no, Cada proceeded to enter the Event #75: The Closer – $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em (30 minute levels) the very next day. And sure enough, the 2009 WSOP Main Event Champ went on to win the thing Sunday for his fourth career bracelet and second of the summer.
There were rumblings just a week ago that this might be the first WSOP in years to not have a double bracelet winner (frankly, it’s amazing to me that it happens nearly every year), but both Cada and Shaun Deeb won their second bracelets of 2018 over the weekend, so the streak continues. The $612,886 Cada won takes him up to $13.5 in career live tourney earnings, all but about a million of that at the WSOP (the two Main Event runs have certainly contributed a lot).
The tournament had three Day 1 flights, followed by one Day 2 and that’s it. Cada made it through Day 1C with 183,000 chips, putting him in about the top quarter of the 331 players who made it to Day 2.
The most significant hand of the day for Cada (aside from the clinching hand, of course), came when there were two tables remaining. He moved all-in for 1.940 million chips and was called by both Andrew Hedley and Chris Conrad, the former of which had Cada covered. Cada had 6-6, Hedley had T-T, and Conrad had A-K suited. The board came 8-9-7-9-5, giving Cada a straight on the river and a massive boost of more than 3 million chips, lifting his stack to 4.7 million.
Now, I called that his most significant hand because it was a three way all-in in which he came from behind on the river, but how about this one to give him a healthy chip lead with ten players remaining? With A-T, Cada flopped trips on a J-A-A flop and got Brayden Gazlay to check-call every bet of his, including a 2.750 million all-in on the river after the turn and river came down 8 and 2, respectively. Gazlay had two pair with J-8, but that wasn’t good enough as Cada was up to 8.7 million chips. Gazlay later got much of it back with a double-up through Cada.
Cada only eliminated one player at the final table, but still went into heads-up against India’s Paawan Bansal with a slight chip lead, 24 million to 23 million. Now, normally when it is that close heads-up, the match takes a while as both players have room to make moves. This one-on-one, though, took just one hand.
Bansal raised pre-flop, Cada re-raised, and Bansal four-bet all-in. Cada called quickly and suddenly all of the chips were in the middle. Cada had pocket Tens while Bansal had 9-8 of diamonds, seemingly a bluff that got picked off.
Bansal flopped a 9, but Cada turned and rivered quads to put an exclamation point on the tournament and really, his 2018 WSOP.
2018 World Series of Poker Event #75: The Closer – $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em (30 minute levels) – Final Table Results
1. Joe Cada – $612,886
2. Paawan Bansal – $378,765
3. Jeffrey Tanouye – $278,774
4. Richard Ali – $206,813
5. Eric Afriat – $154,660
6. Richard Cox – $116,595
7. Jimmy Poper – $88,615
8. Brayden Gazlay – $67,904
9. Joshua Turner – $52,465
Lead photo credit: WSOP.com