ESPN, Joe Cada, & Darvin Moon at the WSOP

I've got a story for you. You recently got together with some of your buddies and played in a decent sized, but small buy-in tournament, and you make the final table. You donk off a good portion of your chips early in chasing a flush, making a big river bet that your opponent sniffs out. Then you survive an all-in when your low pocket pair holds up against A8off. Shortly after that you get dealt AA and end up playing a monster pot against the most aggressive player at the table. After you get in all-in preflop he turns up K9. Should I go on? Sure, why not? You get another opponent all-in, his JJ vs your 33 and spike a 3 on the flop. You badly misplay 22 vs QQ and, you betcha, hit a 2 on the flop, and then you race off with your AK vs 88 and hit a K on the river. You are now heads-up with the chip lead.
I've got a question for you. How do you feel about your poker "skills" right about now? Seriously?
New story. Your name is Joe Cada. You are the youngest player to ever win the WSOP Main Event. ESPN just made you the face of poker for the next year. You and Darvin "you're-the-blogger, I'm-the-logger" Moon just played heads-up for $8.5mil. Yep, and the previous paragraph tells the story of how you got there. Nice job. Congrats. Every poker player who watches the footage on ESPN will be "wowed" by your impressive run at the title. I've got some advice for you in the upcoming year. Just play the nuts.

So it goes.

Hey, don't get me wrong, I love poker. I love the exposure that it gets on ESPN. I love that, at the WSOP, amateurs can play next to seasoned pros. But Moon vs Cada playing heads-up for all the marbles on poker's biggest stage is NOT good for poker. When Chris Moneymaker bluffed off Sammy Farha on his way to the title...that's good for poker. Getting it all-in, behind, repeatedly, and sucking out on national television is not good for poker. Everyone who plays knows that in any tournament you are gonna need to catch some cards to make a deep run. These two?!? Why head to Vegas to play poker when your local Mini-Mart sells lottery tickets? Seriously?

Virtually yours,
Joe

I play as "bntwn" at FullTilt.