American poker professional Joseph Cada, 21, has today become the youngest ever winner of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) main event, taking home a top prize of $8.5 million after overcoming fellow American Darvin Moon in what became the longest U.S main event final table in WSOP history.

After 364 hands of heads-up Texas Hold’em poker which began at 10pm PST in Las Vegas, Cada finally overcame Moon in the early hours of Tuesday with pocket nines against QJ, bringing an end to the ‘November Nine’ final table and the 2009 WSOP.

The ‘November Nine’ returned to the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas to complete the WSOP main event on Saturday night, having qualified for the final table earlier this year in July.

Darvin Moon was the chip leader at the start of play, ahead of fellow U.S players Eric Buchman, Steven Begleiter, Jeff Shulman, Joseph Cada, Kevin Schaffel and Phil Ivey, together with Antoine Saout of France and the UK’s James Akenhead.

After more than 14 hours of play which finished at 6am local time, the marathon final table finally came down to Cada and Moon, with Cada taking almost a 3:1 chip lead going into heads-up play.

“This has been the most exciting Main Event Final Table I’ve ever witnessed,” said WSOP President and Commissioner, Jeffrey Pollack. “To see Joe Cada go from about two million in chips to nearly 136 million in chips – and to watch Darvin Moon go from chip leader to short stack and back again – was truly astonishing. The heads-up competition is going to be outstanding.”

With heads-up play introduced by Vince Neil, the legendary Motley Crue front-man, Joseph Cada, from Shelby Township, Michigan, who harnessed his poker skills playing online, finally overcame Dervin Moon to be proclaimed as the 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event champion and the youngest ever in the history of the WSOP.

With a total prize pool of US$61,043,600, the November Nine all walked away millionaires, with the minimum prize of $1.26 million to the first to be eliminated while the winner took home a top prize of $8.55 million. Runner-up Moon took home a consolation prize of $5.1 million.

Only the 2008 World Series of Poker Europe Main Event was longer than the 14 hour-plus final table of this year’s WSOP.