Wow, Joe Hachem finishes 5th in WSOP Circuit Event

[Grant]

This years World Series of Poker champion Joe Hachem finished 5th in a World Series of Poker Circuit event at Bally's.

He went out on a bad beat, I always enjoy when an unkown champion proves himself like Raymer has. Moneymaker and Varkoni have not lived up to being a World Champion.

Here are few excerpts..

The final table for the WSOP Circuit Championship Las Vegas would start with only eight players, but two of them were World Series Champions -- reigning title holder Joe Hachem, and 1998 champion Scotty Nguyen. Hachem entered the day with the chip lead, and was the likely favorite to win this event and dispel any lingering notions that his $7.5 million victory might have been a fluke.

Here is the bad beat that Joe Hachem took..

The defining moment of this final table came in Hand #43. Tran raised to $18,000, Pham reraised to $50,000 from the button, and Hachem reraised to $150,000 in the small blind. Tran folded, but Pham moved all in -- with Js-10c. Hachem called with his pocket kings (Kc-Kd), and Pham was facing worse than 5-to-1 odds to stay alive. But the flop came Jc-Jh-2s, and Pham caught a miracle flop to take the lead with trip jacks. The players were so shocked that everyone got up from the table, and Pham was the only player who stayed near the table to watch the last two cards. (Hachem was nearby, holding his head down in disbelief.) Those last two cards were 6c-Ad, and reigning WSOP Champion Joe Hachem was crippled down to about $40,000 in chips.

Final table results

1st - Kido Pham - $453,456
2nd - J.C. Tran - $251,920
3rd - Lee Watkinson - $138,556
4th - Scotty Nguyen - $100,768
5th - Joe Hachem - $88,172
6th - John Smith - $75,576
7th - Steven Hudak - $62,980
8th - Doug Lee - $50,384
9th - Minh Ly - $37,788