Peter Eastgate’s early retirement

In 2008 Peter Eastgate stunned the world winning the WSOP Main Event at the age of 22, however, he now says that the time has come to retire

In 2008 when Peter Easgate won the World Series of Poker Main Event, he could not have possibly imagined or hoped for a better start to his poker career. Until then, Phil Hellmuth had held the record as the youngest world champion since he won at the age of 24 in 1989; Eastgate was immediately signed up by one of the leading online poker websites.

That year Eastgate took home a massive $9,119,517, the second biggest prize ever awarded at the WSOP. It is such a large prize that it is still enough to keep Eastgate in tenth place on the all time money list.
At this point it seemed that Eastgate was in an excellent position to achieve what every poker player dreams of, a place in history as one of the greatest ever players. However, unlike most others, this is the last thing that Eastgate wanted.

Prior to this year’s Main Event, just two years after he took the title, Eastgate shocked everyone in the poker world by announcing that he was retiring from the game even though he was very much on top.
Eastgate explained that in the time since his WSOP win, he feels that he has lost his “motivation for playing high-level poker”. He went on to say that he feels now is the time to find out what he wants to do with the rest of his life as at present he just does “not yet know.”
However, if previous poker retirement announcements are anything to go buy then he should not be taken too seriously just yet. They normally come about due to players running out of funds, but as soon as they find some cash the careers normally re-start.

The world renowned poker professional Johnny Moss went from being a millionaire to having nothing and back again so many times during his career that it was hard to keep track of.
However, Eastgate is nowhere near being short on money, there is a good chance that he is being entirely serious, and it seems that this is even more likely as he is auctioning off his championship bracelet on eBay.