As the poker showpieces Main Event gets into full flow, previous champion Peter Eastgate has announced his retirement from the game. After just two years as a poker pro Eastgate announcement came a bit out of the blue to the poker community.

WSOP 2008 Main Event winner Eastgate, who has been a poker pro for PokerStars since his win, has not really enjoyed his time on the poker circuit and has called for a time-out from the game. It is unsure at this time whether he will be seen again, as many pro’s over the years have declared that they are to quit, only to return after a short break. However, since his victory Eastgate has had further success coming 2^nd in the EPT London and winning the PokerStars Caribbean adventure $4,800 event.

In a relatively quiet 2010 for Eastgate, he has continued to cash in some high profile events including the NBC heads-up championship (7^th). It was in cash games that Eastgate excelled and it seems that he no longer has the appetite for all the travelling that the poker tour involves. And it is not like he needs the cash, after picking up $9 million for his Main Event win in 2008.

Eastgate, only 24 now issued a statement through his sponsors PokerStars, stating that he would not be playing this years Main Event. Giving his reasons Eastgate and PokerStars announced:  “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 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 and 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. I want to thank PokerStars, my friends and family for their support over the last 20 months and for their support in my decision to take a break from poker".

In my opinion it sounds like a young man, who has achieved his goal in his poker life and who can argue with that?