WSOP Main Event: Cada and Moon talk heads-up

'I feel confident about everything I do.'

It's a battle of young against old, pro versus amateur, an online player taking on one without an email address and an experienced heads-up specialist battling a man who's played heads-up exactly once.

But after running like Gods to get heads-up for the 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event title, both 21-year old online pro and heads-up guru Joe Cada and 46-year-old Darvin Moon, the luddite logger from Western Maryland, sound confident heading into Monday's fight for poker's most prestigious title.

Despite being bailed out by the deck after several missteps during the more than 14-hour play down to the final two Saturday, and the fact he's facing a 2.5:1 chip deficit, Moon believes he can win.

"I feel confident about everything I do," said Moon. "I know I'm not the best at everything I do, but I feel confident."

Cada's road to heads-up included being down to as little as four big blinds and hitting more than one two-outer on the way up Saturday.

Although he's feeling lucky to still have a shot at the $8.5 million first-place prize, he feels like heads-up is his game.

"What can I say? I got lucky," he said. "I'm not too mad about the plays I made. It was unfortunate the results and unfortunate what happened to the other guys, but good for me I guess.

"I'm very excited to get heads-up because that's what I play and I'm feeling pretty confident. But anything can happen. I came from down to 2 million and now I'm heads-up. Anything can happen. There's still a lot of tournament to be played."

'I'm very excited to get heads-up because that's what I play.'

While Cada regularly plays $10/$20 heads-up cash games online, Moon says he's played heads-up only once - when he won a satellite into the Main Event.

"Back home we always get down to two and chop," he said. "It'll be a learning experience. We'll see how it goes. He's better than me, but I'm confident. They say he's some kind of specialist heads-up online. I'm not online to watch or see, so we'll just see what happens."

Cada has studied heads-up strategy on online forums and through his backers at PokerXFactor.

Moon's strategy appears to be a little less refined.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Can you give me the definition of strategy?"

When play resumes Monday, Cada will hold 135,950,000 chips to Moon's 58,850,000 and the entire poker world appears to be buzzing about the match up.

"This has been the most exciting Main Event Final Table I've ever witnessed," said World Series of Poker 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."

To catch all the action as it happens, tune into PokerListings 2009 Main Event Live Coverage beginning at 10 p.m. PT Monday.