Poker Pro Mike 'Timex' McDonald To Retire Aged Just 20

After a lucrative but brief poker career spanning just a couple of years, poker pro Mike ‘Timex’ McDonald has announced he will be retiring from the game that has successfully secured him a bright and comfortable future.
The young Canadian is generally considered the most successful tournament player in the world under 21, and is the youngest player ever to have won a European Poker Tour (EPT) event. At 18 years of age, McDonald won the EPT German Open in Dortmund for €933,600 ($1,370,161) and has since gone on to accumulate over $2.2 million from live tournament cashes, not including his many successes in the online arena.
Mike ‘Timex’ McDonald now intends to leave his poker career and his red pro status at Full Tilt Poker behind and free his time to pursue other goals. As the 20 year old poker pro explained:
“My life goal was to more or less get to the point where I never had to do anything for the rest of my life as early as possible. I’m at that point; I have almost 0 obligations, responsibilities and if I really wanted to I could sit around for the rest of my life watching the world go by and I’m just realizing thats not what I want.”
It would seem that his more immediate plans involve returning to school, learning new things and living  “a life that is more in touch with everyone else.” Mike ‘Timex’ McDonald’s meteoric rise to poker fame started after following the advice from his chess instructor. As he explained:
“I got into poker a lot differently than most people. I used to play chess and my chess teacher told me it was a good way to make like $40 or $50 an hour without any education. So I started playing small and worked it up from there. I guess I really didn’t realize I was that good until I started playing tournaments online. In my first year and a bit of playing I made $10k or $12k. Then in my first three months of playing tournaments I made like $100k. Over the next six months I made like $500k so I figured I was getting pretty good.”
Despite now deciding to pursue other goals and ambitions, McDonald still loves the game that has secured his future and doesn’t rule out the possibility of a return at some stage in the future.
“I guess I should point out that I do enjoy playing poker and I doubt I’ll ever straight up “quit” playing poker, I just think at this point I sort of feel no ambition towards poker,”  he said.