CardPlayer.com – Poker pro Mike Sica, who won a World Series of Poker bracelet in 2004, passed away on Wednesday due to lung cancer, according to reports.

Sica, nicknamed “Little Man”, was 69.

The New Jersey native recorded around $1.2 million in career tournament earnings.

“I had come back from playing at the Borgata and had a bad pain in my neck,” Sica told the WSOP earlier this year. “After the doctors ran some tests, they told me it was cancer.”

“Don’t start smoking,” he cautioned. “I started when I was 16 and I remember a 93-year-old neighbor who walked up to me one day when I was lighting up who said to me, you better stop doing that. Looking back, I wish I had listened to him. So to the younger players out there, I say do yourself a favor and quit now.”