Joe Cassidy, one of the rising stars in the poker community, recently got very lucky at the 2012 WSOP when he was playing the $5000 Omaha 8 or Better poker tourney and was competing against top poker professionals like Phil Ivey and Scotty Nguyen.
This was Cassidy’s first win at the World Series of Poker and he got to take home a unique WSOP gold bracelet that was specially redesigned this year. This was the twenty-fourth event of the series and Cassidy took the first place prize money which was worth $294,777. He also secured Player of the Year points worth 816 from Card Player.
Cassidy commented on his win and his opponents and mentioned who he was up against.
“Mike Matusow, Phil Ivey and Scotty Nguyen. Obviously their resumes speak for themselves. It’s great to play with players like that as well, you learn a lot watching them and seeing the little things they do in hands, things you might not think to do in tournaments. You know, it was just a great experience as a poker player.”
Cassidy has been doing quite well for himself so far and has amasses a total of $1.8 million and more in cash wins by playing poker tourney games all over the US. However, it must be said that this World Series of Poker win is his first live poker event success in a tournament.
Cassidy was very pleased with this win and explained what it meant to him.
“You know, it’s kind of one of those things where it means more to people outside of poker, inside of poker it means a lot too, obviously, but in terms of talking to your family or when you tell people what you do, they always want to know if you have a gold bracelet. So now it kind of validates me outside of poker, because I think that among my peers, people knew that I was a good player already and I didn’t need to prove that to anyone, but just to have that on the resume means something.”
The poker tourney began early but went on for many hours as the competition was strong, Cassidy played three hands against Ivey and also went up against Nguyen, both of whom have plenty of experience not only in playing live poker but also in winning these competitions.
