World Series of Poker

Michigan card shark, 21, on verge of making poker history

Tim Twentyman / The Detroit News

Joe Cada's chance at $8.5 million still is in the cards at the World Series of Poker Main Event in Las Vegas.

Cada, 21, of Chesterfield Township, and Maryland's Darvin Moon are the only players left at the final table and will play heads-up for the grand prize, starting at 1 a.m. Tuesday.

After a marathon session Saturday and early Sunday, Cada has nearly 136 million in chips to Moon's nearly 59 million, and can become the youngest Main Event champion ever. Last year's winner, Peter Eastgate, was 22.

"It really hasn't sunk in yet. I'm just still surprised," Cada, going on 30 hours of no sleep, said by phone Sunday afternoon. " I've never experienced anything like that final table."

Regardless of how heads-up goes, Cada has guaranteed himself at least $5,182,601.

Play began at 3 p.m. Saturday for the "November Nine," the final players remaining from the original pool of 6,494 entries -- a pool that was whittled down to nine the first two weeks of July. And after 14 ½ hours and 274 hands Saturday and Sunday, it's already the longest final table in Main Event history.

Cada's run was nearly derailed a number of times. On Saturday night, he plummeted to a stack barely four times the big blind after calling Jeff Schulman's all-in on Hand No. 122.

Cada was dominated before the flop, showing ace-jack to Schulman's ace-king. While the turn gave Cada on open-ended straight draw heading to the river, he didn't hit and was left with just 2.275 million chips, or 1 percent of the chips in play.

But an all-in here, a blind steal there, and Cada clawed his way back into contention.

And he made it into the final two when he called Antoine Saout's all-in re-raise early Sunday morning. Saout showed 8-8 against Cada's ace-king. The flop went 5-4-5 and Saout stayed ahead. The turn came 10 and Cada needed to hit an ace or king to advance.

The river ... a king, setting of a raucous celebration by the loudest fan base at the Rio All-Suites Hotel & Casino, just off the Strip. Decked in Michigan maize shirts and hats -- Cada roots for the Wolverines -- his fans mobbed their poker hero after he hit the six-outer on the river.

"I thought I played well there at the end. I went on four long runs after losing a big pot and was pretty fortunate there a couple times," Cada told The News. "That was pretty unbelievable."

Saout was eliminated in third place, and that set up the head-to-head showdown.

"Luck always helps," Cada told reporters afterward. "I'll take all the luck I can get."

Moon, 46, a professional logger from Oakland, Md., entered the final table as chip leader but finished the session with little chip movement. He has done some major damage by Cada, who doubled up when Moon, holding king-nine off-suit, went all in and was called. Cada's pocket aces held up, even with a scary flop that delivered a nine.

"I was surprised at how many hands he played against me," Cada told The News, speaking of Moon. "He didn't play that many against me when we were on the same table before the final table. Going into heads up I feel pretty confident. I have a lot of experience playing heads-up; I play a lot of that online. I don't think he has a whole lot of experience, but it's poker and anything can happen."

Cada's tournament life was on the line numerous times, but the cards kept falling his way.

His first big all-in came with pocket fours to the ace-eight of Phil Ivey, regarded as one of the best poker players in the world. Community cards of 2-10-3-9-7 kept Cada in with 12.55 million chips and left Ivey as the short stack at 10.4 million. Ivey eventually finished seventh.

Later, Cada survived two all-ins despite being a major underdog heading to the flop -- first his pocket threes trailed the jacks of Schulman (fifth place), then his twos were way behind Saout's pocket queens. Both times the flop delivered Cada trips, or three of a kind.

Since stunning Saout with three twos, Cada -- whose reputation is as an online poker star (he's made more than $500,000 playing online since 2008) -- hasn't relinquished the chip lead.

"They say he's some kind of specialist online," Moon, a simple man who prior to this World Series hadn't even been on an airplane, told reporters early Sunday morning. "But I'm not online to watch."

ttwentyman@detnews.com