Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2007 | 7:14 a.m.
By winning the Doyle Brunson North American Poker Championship recently at the Bellagio, Joe Hachem became the fourth player to win both a World Poker Tour event and a World Series of Poker main event championship. Hachem won the 2005 World Series title. The others:
When veteran poker pro Scotty Nguyen won one of the first major poker tournaments of 2006, a World Poker Tour event in Mississippi, he called it the second most memorable moment of his career.
Holding on to the No. 1 spot, Nguyen said, was his 1998 victory in the World Series of Poker main event.
When Joe Hachem won the final big poker tournament of 2006 - the Doyle Brunson North American Poker Championship last month at the Bellagio - he joined Nguyen in a select group of players to have won a World Poker Tour event as well as the World Series title.
Hachem, however, had a different take on the relative merits of the two feats.
"Let me tell you, winning this event, I am twice as excited - no, 10 times as excited - as winning the World Series," said Hachem, the 2005 World Series of Poker champion. "I've come so close over the last two years ... It's so important to get that second (major) win under your belt."
Certainly the World Series will remain special to Hachem, who made his name in the poker world - and more than $7 million - by winning the "Big One."
It's just that his victory in a rugged field of 583 players in the World Poker event firmly established Hachem as one of poker's upper-echelon players. He's no longer just a guy who played pretty well and got extremely lucky in front of the ESPN cameras but who lacks the chops to compete at an elite level against the world's best poker players.
(Paging Mr. Moneymaker.)
"Winning the World Series, (people say), 'Yeah, yeah, blah, blah, he played well, but what else can he do?' " Hachem said at the Bellagio after earning the top prize of more than $2.1 million. "My World Series result was fantastic, and I was very proud of that. But to actually get the win here it just means so much, it's worth so much more."
Hachem, a former chiropractor from Melbourne, Australia, outlasted a field laden with professional poker players in the Brunson event, which carried a $15,000 entry fee and concluded Dec. 19, capping the Bellagio's annual Five Diamond series of tournaments. The total prize pool in the main event amounted to more than $8.4 million.
The final table will air on the Travel Channel (Cox cable channel 66) on a date to be determined.
"The field here was the toughest field I've ever played, honestly," Hachem said. "At my first table we had eight pros. At my second table we had five pros. It was a really good tournament. You had people who really knew what they were doing playing against you."
Hachem's performance drew praise from fellow professional Daniel Negreanu of Las Vegas, who finished third ($592,000) behind runner-up Jim Hanna of West Palm Beach, Fla. ($1.09 million).
"Actually the (recent) World Series of Poker winners in general, you look at them and you're like, OK, (Chris) Moneymaker, (Greg) Raymer and (Jamie) Gold, you think, OK these guys can't play, and the general consensus is that these guys got lucky," Negreanu said.
"But, you know, with Joe, he actually plays like a pro. The other three don't. The other three are kind of like flash-in-the-pan types for the most part. But (Hachem), he's a real legit player."
With his victory, Hachem also punched a ticket for the World Poker Tour Championship, which takes place April 21-27 at the Bellagio and carries a $25,000 entry fee.
Poker for a cause
The inaugural Jay Love Memorial Poker Tournament will be Jan. 20 at the Orleans poker room to benefit youth sports programs in Southern Nevada.
The entry fee for the no-limit Texas hold 'em tournament is $115 with proceeds going to the nonprofit Jay Love Foundation.
Registration will be at 1:30 p.m. the day of the event and play is scheduled to begin at 2 p.m.
The field is limited to 150 players.
To sign up or for more information, call Dave Phillips, tournament director, at 292-0580.
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