Joe Hachem
The 2005 World Series of Poker main event champion, Joe Hachem is a Lebanese born Australian who came to the wonderful world of high stakes No Limit Texas Hold’Em after a debilitating blood-disease affecting the use of his hands ended a 13-year chiropractic career. As he attempted to reinvent himself as a career mortgage broker, his affectation for poker slow took over as the true focus of this next stage of his professional life.
Before ever taking the WSOP crown, Joe Hachem had established himself as a force to be reckoned with on the felt, advancing to 2 final tables at major Australian No Limit Texas Hold’Em tournaments as well as Pot Limit Texas Hold’Em and Pot Limit Omaha. And before beating 5,618 players, ending with a brutal days-long head-to-head against fellow poker star Steve Dannemann, for the 2005 WSOP main event bracelet, Hachem had already come in 10th place in the $1,000 No Limit Texas Hold’em rebuy event, winning over $28,000 and beating out more than 800 other players. It was with those winnings, in fact, that he was able to come up with $10,000 buy-in for a seat in the main event he ended up winning.
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An avid PokerStars.com online poker player from back in his Melbourne days, Joe Hachem is a family man, married for over 16 years, who wanted to wait until his children were older before taking his professional poker life to the next level. His golden opportunity came when he decided to join a friend who won a satellite tournament for a seat at the 2005 World Series of Poker on his trip to Binion’s Las Vegas. That meant his first WSOP win was also his first WSOP appearance. It also makes him the first Australian to ever win the WSOP.
After his $7.5 million grand prize win, he went on to place 5th in the 2005 World Series circuit event at Paris/Bally’s and 7th in the Friday/Saturday No Limit Hold’em tournament at the Bellagio.
He followed that up with a first place win in the 2006 World Poker Tour 5 Diamond Classic and a $2.1 million grand prize, making the latest of only 4 players in poker history to ever win a World Series of Poker main event and a World Poker Tour event (the others being Scotty Nguyen, Carlos Mortensen, and Doyle Brunson. In the 2006 WSOP, he came in 2nd and 4th in two separate Texas Hold’Em tournaments.
One of the newest official PokerStars spokespeople, Joe Hachem recently finished in the money in their annually-awaited World Poker Tour Caribbean Poker Adventure. All-in-all, Joe Hachem has played over 100,000 hands at PokerStar.net. His total career winnings as of 2006 are over $10,200,000, making him only the second player in poker history to have a lifetime winnings of more than $10 million.
So if you’re ever watching a televised poker tournament and you hear the chant “Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!” coming from the stands, now you know who they’re cheering for. It’s Joe Hachem.
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