Don’t confuse Joe Hachem with other recent WSOP Main Event winners: 2007 winner Jerry Yang is a poker hobbyist with no plans to parlay his 2007 Main Even victory into a poker career, 2006 winner Jamie Gold is so bogged down with legal troubles that he’s got no time to play cards, 2004 winner Greg Raymer made another great run at the Main Event the following year (finishing in 26th out of 5612 total entrants) but other than that hasn’t made too much noise in the poker world and 2003 winner Chris Moneymaker made it to a WPT final table but has yet to make waves in any major circuit. But 2005 Main Event champion Joe Hachem is no one-hit wonder.
Since his first major tournament buy-in in 2005 (his first tournament was the 2005 WSOP $1,000 Limit Hold’em event in which he finished 10th) Hachem has cashed in 8 events with top 5 finishes in: 5th in 2005/06 WSOP Paris/Bally’s Circuit $10,000 NL Hold’em, 4th in 2006 WSOP $2,500 PL Hold’em, 2nd in 2006 WSOP $2,500 NL Hold’em Short Handed, 1st in the Poker After Dark WSOP Champions II, 1st in 2006 WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic and 1st in the 2005 WSOP Main Event. He is one of only two players who have earned more than $10,000,000 playing live tournament poker (Jamie Gold is the other with his $12,000,000 2006 Main Event victory) and the only player in the world to have won two different live tournaments worth more than $2,000,000: the WPT Five Diamond Classic was worth $2,207,575 and the 2005 WSOP Main Event was worth $7,500,000.
Interestingly, the man who has become one of PokerStars highest-profile pros was originally a chiropractor, not a card player. Hachem had a successful office in Australia before a blood disorder forced him to give up the physical strain on his hands that a chiropractor must endure. Following his 2002 retirement from medicine, Joe toiled in small cash tournaments in Melbourne, Australia before making his fateful 2005 trip around the world to Las Vegas and the World Series of Poker.
Joe is married with four children and still resides in his native Australia.
Click here for Joe Hachem’s interview with Poker News Daily.
