WSOP Main Event Champion Peter Eastgate Quits Poker

We'll see how long this last.....Reposted from Cake Poker:

WSOP Main Event Champion Peter Eastgate Quits Poker

Peter Eastgate has decided to take the money and run.

Every poker player dreams of winning the World Series of Poker Main Event. But how many of them would quit the game completely just two years after claiming its most prestigious tournament title? It’s hard to say exactly, but that’s precisely what former 2008 world champion Peter Eastgate has decided to do.

“When I started playing poker for a living, it was never my goal to spend the rest of my life as a professional poker player,” Eastgate said in a statement announcing his early retirement. “My goal was to become financially independent. I achieved that by winning the WSOP main event in 2008. The period following has taken me on a worldwide tour, where I have seen some amazing places and met many new people; it has been a great experience.”

“In the 20 months following my WSOP win, I feel that I have lost my motivation for playing high-level poker along the way,” he continued. “I have decided that now is the time to find out what I want to do with the rest of my life. What this will be, I do not yet know. I have decided to take a break from live tournament poker, and try to focus on Peter Eastgate, the person.”

The youngest player ever to win the WSOP Main Event, Peter Eastgate took home $9.1 million for his achievement. In the two intervening years he grabbed another $1.8 million in earnings thanks to impressive showings at EPT London, the NBC National Heads-Up Championship, and a $4,800 preliminary event at the 2009 PCA.

Eastgate’s decision to quit the game echoes that of another young poker player who has enjoyed incredible success over the last few years. Former EPT Dortmund champion and $4 million man Mike McDonald announced earlier this year that he was quitting poker in late March before ever stepping inside the Rio for the World Series of Poker.

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