Many of us are finding that when we watch the World Series of Poker, the players are getting younger. For some, they think this is cool. For others, they might worry just a bit. They aren’t worried about the game. This changes nothing as they will tell you. What they are worried about more are the things that some of these players are giving up.
One of the players who are worried about players this age and younger; basically those in their twenties is Joe Cada. Many of you remember him as last year’s winner of the World Series of Poker Main Event. He is now the youngest player to ever have won this championship. While he’s happy about it, he looks back on what it took for him to get to this point in his life.
Cada had started playing poker online at PartyPoker just as soon as he turned eighteen. Normal people only play a few hours and so forth. Not Cada though. He had told reporters who are amazed at what he has accomplished that he spent anywhere between sixty to seventy hours playing online. It consumed his life.
He was on his way in life as well. He was taking classes at the local community college. He had a job as a bus boy. While they weren’t any big accomplishments, they were accomplishments none the less. He thought he was getting somewhere. However, when he started getting into poker, Cada quit his job and dropped out of college.
While Cada loves the fact that he has won so much money, he says he wishes he would have stayed in school and kept his job. This was his first try in the main event and he took it home with him. He too has noticed the trend of younger people who have so much going for them leaving the things that they do have going for them and then playing poker as a poker professional. However, he’s a bit worried about this. His reasoning you ask?
His reasoning for worrying is that all it takes is one bad hand. It means worrying that they aren’t living life to the fullest. They have to keep playing the game and all it takes is one person to show you up. While poker knows the other person’s hand, it’s also about being on your game. While there are many young players who are on their game, there are just as many who could be doing the things that Cada sometimes wishes he hadn’t given up to focus solely on poker.
The best advice that Joe Cada can give is to have a balance between poker and life. If you let it, poker will try running your life and that’s when you begin to look back on all those things that you could have done. He worries that those who are trying to be like him in order to beat him might wonder if they did the right thing if they do achieve what it is that they are setting out to achieve.