Peter Eastgate became a household name in the world of professional poker when he beat Ivan Demidov and took home the title in the WSOP 2008 Main Event, taking home $9,152,416. In 2008, Eastgate was the youngest player to ever win a Main Event in the WSOP (though Joe Cada overturned the record the following year). Now, Eastgate is one of the youngest professional poker players to retire, throwing in his chips at the age of 24.

Eastgate has been lucky enough to rake in win after win over the course of his poker career. In 2009, he took home $343,000 in a European Poker Tour Caribbean Poker Adventure Hold’em event; he also won over $1.3 million when he took second place at the EPT London Championship Event. Eastgate is in fourth place on the all-time money winners’ leader board and has earned more than $11.3 million in a few short years. Why is he giving all of this up?

Eastgate says that he never had any intention of playing poker forever, and he’s ready to figure out what he wants to do with the rest of his life. He says, “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. My goal was to become financially independent. I have decided that now is the time to find out what I want to do with the rest of my life.”

There are poker players who strive for their entire lives to earn a quarter of what Eastgate has won in the past few years. It will be interesting to see if Eastgate will be as successful at whatever he decides to do with his life as he has been in the world of professional poker.