With the way things are going for him at the poker tables, maybe someday soon he will be known as Tony Hachem instead of “Joe Hachem’s Brother.” This weekend, the lesser-known Hachem won the Australia New Zealand Poker Tour (ANZPT) Perth event, which was the first live tournament victory of his career. For beating 221 opponents in the $2,500 No Limit Hold’em tournament, Hachem won AUD $132,750 (approximately USD $121,593).
While this is the first tournament the member of Team PokerStars Pro Australia has won, it is not his first successful tournament. On the contrary, Hachem has been tearing up the felts in his neck of the woods for more than a year now. He won the ANZPT Player of the Year Award in 2009 after a string of deep finishes and has continued that trend this year. Let’s take a look at Hachem’s finishes in ANZPT Main Events dating back to last year:
February 2009 (Adelaide): 15th
April 2009 (Sydney): 17th
May 2009 (Melbourne): 16th
July 2009 (Queenstown): 18th
February 2010 (Adelaide): 7th
March 2010 (Perth): 1st
While Hachem did not reach an ANZPT final table until this year, his series of high finishes (he failed to cash in only one ANZPT event) earned him enough points to outdistance the pack in the ANZPT Player of the Year race. Hachem finished the inaugural ANZPT season with 170.1 leaderboard points, almost 21 more than second place finisher Chris Levick and over 33 points more than the third and fourth place finishers, Joel Dodds and Danny Joukhader, respectively. Only two other players had 100 points or more.
The field of 222 players at the Burswood Casino was the largest ever in Perth, breaking the previous record by 50%. The total prize pool of AUD $510,600 was also the largest ever in Western Australia.
Hachem began final table play as one of the middle chip stacks. The Melbourne resident may have felt like an outsider, as seven of the nine members of the final table were from Perth, although not as much of an outsider as eighth place finisher Eoin Kennedy, who hails from Ireland. Hachem finally grabbed the chip lead when the tournament was down to three players and went into heads-up play against Aleks Lackovic with a 2:1 chip advantage.
It was over quickly, as about 10 minutes in, the two men got all of their chips in the middle, Hachem with pocket jacks and Lackovic with A-K of diamonds. The flop was almost as good as Hachem could have asked for without a jack appearing: 9d-Qc-3c. While Lackovic still had his two overcards, the only draws he had were backdoor flush and straight draws. The five of hearts came on the turn, taking away those draws, and the three of diamonds on the river clinched it for Hachem. In addition to the title and prize money, Hachem is now once again atop the ANZPT leader board.
The emotional Hachem told PokerStars, which sponsors the ANZPT, “I am so over the moon, winning this means so much to me. I have come so close it is fantastic to finally have a title to my name.”
ANZPT Perth Final Table Standings (all payouts in AUD)
1. Tony Hachem (Victoria, Australia) – $132,750
2. Aleks Lackovic (Perth, Western Australia) – $84,250
3. Vesko Zmukic (Perth, Western Australia) – $47,500
4. Dale Marsland (Perth, Western Australia) – $38,300
5. Tu Le (Perth, Western Australia) – $32,000
6. Jimmy Wong (Perth, Western Australia) – $26,800
7. Zaffer Soemya (Perth, Western Australia) – $21,700
8. Eoin Kennedy (Tipperary, Ireland) – $16,600
9. Wade Beavis (Perth, Western Australia) – $12,750
