 Joseph Hachem
You might say that poker is
changing right infront of our eyes. Once again. Mr. Joseph Hachem,
world's top poker player paid
only $10.000. And won.At first he was a chiropractor. But he had
to leave it because of a blood disorder. Later on he decided to
play poker for a living: "I
started in casinos, but in the past two years, I've been playing
online a lot."Poker online is not his only profession He
also runs a broker business. Thus he gambles anyway…watching
over his Lebanese temper Like Sam Farha Joseph Hachem is a native
of Lebanon. And though he is not as racy as Farha, he has it.
Joseph says: "I used
to be a lot more excitable. I'm of Lebanese origin so my blood
is at boiling temperature at rest. I'm very emotional."But
he learned to control his temper. And his game has improved accordingly.
WSOP is not his first tournament. He took part in several Australian
tournaments. This year he also placed 10th in the $1000/with
rebuys No Limit Hold’em. It’s widely known that he’s
of Lebanese, but his home is not in Lebanon. He lives in Melbourne,
Australia. So, he’s considered to be an Australian poker player.
That’s why Australia went mad after his victory. When the final
hand was over Joseph took an Australian flag (his fellows were
shouting: "Aussie,
Aussie, Oi!, Oi!, Oi!" at
that moment), wrapped it around him and cried out: "Thank
you, America."It changes everythingNow he has $7.500.000
million. What is he going to do with that money? In fact – nothing
special. He says: "A million
dollars changes my life, let alone $7.5 million!" |
 Greg
Reymar
From the word's of the master himself:
How I Won the WSOP-
Going into the final hand, I had about 18 million in chips to David’s
8 million or so. The blinds were 50 and 100 thousand, with a 10 thousand
ante. David and I had played 6 hands so far, and none of them were
of any significance. 3 times the small blind on the button had folded,
twice the small blind on the button had raised and the big blind
had folded, and once David raised from the small blind on the button,
I called preflop, but then I check-and-folded on the flop.
Going into the final hand, David was the small blind on the button,
and he made a standard raise to 300 thousand. I looked down at the
8d 8c. Clearly too good of a hand to fold, so the question was whether
to flat-call or reraise. I chose to just call for two reasons. First,
I was out of position the rest of the hand, and second, I didn’t
think David would put me on a pocket pair too quickly postflop, since
I believed he would expect me to reraise with almost any pocket pair
preflop. Thus, if I flopped a set, it would very well hidden. The
flop came 245 rainbow. I was very confident that I had the best poker hand.
While it was perfectly possible that David had a larger pocket pair,
or had outflopped me, it was a lot more likely that he had two big
unpaired cards. I decided to check-raise, and David obliged by betting
500 thousand. I raised to 1.6 million. David quickly called. Well,
David almost always acts quickly, so that alone was not a tell of
any sort. However, my feel of the situation was that I had the best
poker hand. |
 Chris
Moneymaker
A few words from Mr. Moneymaker:
Personally,
it has been a big change. Everybody in the world thought I was
going to be this big star after I won the World Series, and I'm
like, "No man, I'm going back to work and everything
is going to be back to normal, no big deal." It so happened they
were all right. I'm a humble guy who has a fear of public speaking
and can't talk in front of a large group or in front of cameras,
and they told me I was going on David Letterman and that I was
going to be on all these shows. And I was like, "The hell I am!
I'm not going anywhere close to that stuff." But they talked
me into doing it and it's been a whirlwind ever since.
And
it's been weird. I got friends back home who keep me sort
of leveled and my girlfriend keeps me pretty level. I had
a friend I play golf with and he would call me butthead all
the time, but right when I got back he came up and said, "Mr.
Moneymaker, can I get a picture made with you?" And I was
like, "Man, what
are you doing? You called me an asshole last week on the golf
course.
I am learning a lot more, first of all. Since I won I have been
playing poker with a different caliber opponent, so I am definitely
learning a lot more. I don't play as wild as I used to. I've got
to play a little more conservative and watch what I do a little
bit more.
That adds enormous pressure, but there is an enormous amount of
pressure lifted when the money doesn't matter as much. |
