Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2005 | 8:04 a.m.
Jeff Haney's sports betting column appears Monday, Friday (gaming) and Wednesday (poker). Reach him at (702) 259-4041 or [email protected].
Not much has changed for Aussie Joseph Hachem since he jockeyed his way through a field of 5,619 to win the 2005 World Series of Poker at Binion's in July.
Well, except for the fact he's richer by $7.5 million -- the top prize for winning poker's most prestigious competition and the biggest tournament in the history of the game.
Oh, and now every time he joins a poker game, a funny thing happens. All of the other players sit up a little straighter, ignore the football game on the plasma screen on the wall, stop ogling the cocktail waitress and start playing their A-plus game.
"I have a giant bull's-eye in the center of my forehead," Hachem said recently at Bally's, where he was competing in a World Series of Poker Circuit tournament.
Amateur opponents want nothing more than the right to brag to their friends that they outwitted the world champ to win a pot.
The wily pros he faced at the final table of the no-limit Texas hold 'em tournament at Bally's were no different.
Hachem ended up placing fifth in a field of 134 entrants to earn a payday of $88,172 -- but until a pivotal hand against eventual winner Thang "Kido" Pham on the tournament's final day, Hachem looked poised to collect another championship title.
Both players were among the tournament leaders -- they had "big stacks," in poker lingo -- when they got all their money in before the flop, or first three community cards.
Hachem was holding pocket kings -- a monster favorite against the jack-10 held by Pham, who tried to push his opponent off his hand with a big reraise but knew immediately he had made a mistake when Hachem called the bet.
When two jacks came on the flop, Pham won a pot of more than $600,000 in tournament money -- about half of all the chips in play. Hachem never recovered and busted out shortly afterward.
"I made the correct read, and I made the correct bet. He made a ridiculous play, and he won," Hachem said, which might sound like a harsh assessment -- until you consider Pham agreed wholeheartedly.
"I played it pretty bad," Pham said.
Still, Hachem proved he's more than just Australia's first one-hit wonder since the Divinyls.
His performance in the four-day tournament, portions of which will be televised by ESPN at a date to be determined, validated his World Series of Poker championship, Hachem said.
"Absolutely," said Hachem, a native of Lebanon, who moved with his family to Melbourne as a child and now lives part time in Las Vegas. "I feel I played a very strong tournament. I had a good shot to win again.
"I came in not wanting to make a mistake, and I didn't make any mistakes."
It was coincidental, if not a little surreal, that Hachem's final-table appearance at Bally's came during a stretch when replays of the 2005 World Series of Poker were in heavy rotation on ESPN.
So each morning during the Bally's tournament, you could walk through the race and sports books, look up and see Hachem's image on six, eight, a dozen jumbo screens. There he is, flopping a flush against Irish pro Andrew Black, making a straight against runner-up Steve Dannenman, letting loose with his trademark phrase, "Pass the sugar!"
Like millions of other poker junkies, Hachem said he has been transfixed by TV coverage of the World Series of Poker.
"It's like I'm reliving every moment of it," he said.
His victory in the World Series made Hachem an instant international icon -- a circumstance that brings its own set of tricky challenges, he said.
"You're thrown into celebrity status awfully quickly," said Hachem, 39, who is married with four children. "Everyone wants an autograph, or they want to take a photo for their aunt, or their daughter. ... But it's been great. People have been awfully nice.
"It can have a downside at times," Hachem said of his newfound fame. "But on the whole it's been a good experience. The good outweighs the bad."
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