The Top Aussie Poker Pros
The Aussie poker scene has been going strong for a number of years, but surprisingly enough it was not until 2005 that a player from Down Under won a World Series of Poker bracelet in a Texas Hold'em event.
In the decade since, AU players have gone on in leaps and bounds, winning some of the biggest tournaments in Europe, North America and of course Australia. Here are just some of the biggest names to have graced the felt.
Joe Hachem
A former chiropractor from Melbourne, Joe Hachem sent waves around the poker world when he won the World Series of Poker Main Event in 2005 for
US$7.5m. Proving he wasn't a one-hit wonder, the following year saw Hachem go on to take down the Five Diamond World Poker Classic, one of the biggest events on the World Poker Tour, for a first place prize of more than $2.2m.
Now 48 years old, the Lebanese-Australian pro also has a number of six-figure scores to his name, and his lifetime winnings of nearly $12m put him 14th on the world all-time money list. Hachem's brother Tony and nephew Anthony are also accomplished poker players, with both winning events on the prestigious Australia and New Zealand Poker Tour (ANZPT).
Jeff Lisandro
The most successful Aussie in World Series of Poker history, the Perth-born pro has five bracelets including three accrued in just over two
weeks in 2009, earning him that year's Player of the Year title. However Lisandro's biggest lifetime score came in the 2006 Main Event, with a 17th-place finish good for more than $650,000.
A well-respected cash game player, Lisandro now resides in Salerno, Italy. However he can still be seen at the tables in Australia and the United States, frequently flying over for the Aussie Millions and World Series of Poker.
Jackie Glazier
Glazier is a relatively late bloomer in poker terms. A regular around smaller tournaments in her native Melbourne, she only turned pro in her
mid-thirties, around the age that many online poker pros would be considered veterans of the game. However the 40-year-old has made up for lost time and then some, establishing herself as one of the best Australian players on the circuit.
Going into the 2012 World Series of Poker, Glazier had only one previous cash in Las Vegas, but that all changed with a second-place finish in a $3,000 bracelet event worth more than $450,000. The following year brought even more acclaim with a 31st-place finish in the main event (where she was the last woman standing) and a World Series of Poker Europe bracelet in France.
Mel Judah
Judah, nicknamed 'The Silver Fox', has been a familiar face on the live poker scene for longer than some of the younger Aussie pros have been alive. He
was the first Australian WSOP bracelet winner way back in 1989, while he won a second bracelet (both were in seven card stud) in 1996 and finished third in the Main Event for $371,000 the year after that.
The biggest of Judah's nine six-figure cashes came on the World Poker Tour, however, when he beat a stacked Legends of Poker final table in 2003 for more than half a million dollars. An innovator as well as a successful pro, Judah is the inventor of Cashout Poker, a tournaments format which allows players to cash out some of their winnings before the end of a tournament.
Jeff Rossiter
One of the younger crop of top pros from Australia along with the likes of James Obst and Jono Karamilikis, Rossiter has made waves in Europe
and Asia, not to mention his native Melbourne. The Melbourne native is one of the most accomplished players in the world under the age of 25, and is already second on the Australian all-time money list and gaining fast on Joe Hachem.
He burst onto the scene with a third-place finish in the 2011 Aussie Millions main event, worth AU$700,000, but his biggest score to date came last year in the GuangDong Asia Millions, worth some HK$24.5m (about AU$3.4m). The youngster is a regular in some of the biggest tournaments in Macau, but has shown he can mix it with the best all around the world with a quarter-million score at last year's EPT London just one of the latest additions to a glittering resumé.
Antanas 'Tony G' Guoga
Tony G may have been born in Lithuania, but he spent his formative years in Melbourne, as is evident from his Australian accent. The
40-year-old is one of the most outspoken and divisive figures on the poker circuit, but is currently staying clear of the tables as he focuses on a new priority: he was elected as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) in the most recent
European elections.
In an illustrious decade-long poker career, the 'Mouth from Down Under', as he is sometimes known, has racked up more than $4.8m in tournament earnings plus plenty more at the cash tables. Guoga has six-figure cashes on four separate continents, an incredible feat highlighted by victories at the 2005 European Poker Championships in London and Singapore's Betfair Asian Poker Tour Championship Event the following year, each worth just shy of $500,000.
