Jeff Lisandro and Australia´s Top Poker Players

Although Top players is a relative concept. In 10 years’ time, top 5 list of best Australian poker players is probably going to look a lot different. However, since we live in the year 2022, we are going to look at the top 5 Australian poker players as it stands right now. This list is based on tournament poker, since cash games are difficult or even impossible to track.

Number 1 on the all time money list of Australia is Michael Addamo. The 28 years old player from Melbourne managed to win almost $20,000,000 in tournament earnings since his first tournament in the Melbourne Crown Casino in 2012, when he was just 18 years old.

However, it was not until 2014 and 2015 when he started to play bigger live tournaments. In 2015 he managed to win two tournaments worth A$ 10,530  and A$ 8,100. Although not winning these tournaments, he won A$ 40,000 getting the 21^st place in the Aussie millions. Another big cash was in Macau  getting the 26^th place in the Asia Pacific Poker Tour for $24,897.

In 2016 Addamo went to Las Vegas to play in the World Serie of Poker. Where he was able to cash in 7 different WSOP tournaments. His second cash was in the $1500 No Limit Hold´em event getting a third place for $196,202. In total he managed to win almost 250K, with a cash in the WSOP main event getting a 807^th place for $16,007.

After the summer of 2016, he started to take poker more serious, where he started playing tournaments on a more regular basis. After 2016 he started cashing big in tournaments every year. Winning a couple hundred thousand to a couple million dollars several times.  His Top payout was in 2021 when he won the Super High Roller of the PokerGO Tour in Las Vegas. He won 3,4 million dollars winning that tournament.

All these wins make Michael Addamo by far the best poker tournament player of Australia.

Number two on the list is the only Australian pokerplayer that won the Main Event of the World Series of Poker. Joe Hachem was born in Libanon but moved over to Melbourne, Australia wan he was six years old. Winning the main event in 2005 gave him his biggest career winnings. Joe Hachem received 7,5 million dollar for getting the first prize in the most prestigious poker tournament of the world.

One year later the won the $15,000 WPT event in Las Vegas where he received $2,2 million for winning the tournament. After that cash he managed to win a couple nice cashes. However, he never won any major tournaments after that big win. However, the is this number two on the all time money list of Australian Poker players winning over 12 million dollars.

Third on the Australian all-time money list is poker player Kahle Burns. Burn was born in Geelong, Australia and played his first serious poker tournament in 2009. It wasn´t until April 2013 when he got his first serious cash In a live poker tournament. He ended up with a 5^th place in the $10,000 World Series of Poker Asia-pacific in Melbourne, winning more than $200,000.

After that big cash he started playing live tournaments more regularly. Where the first two on this list got a big cash of multiple millions, Kahle Burns highest cash was 1,3 million dollars when he got a third place in the Super High Roller Triton Poker tournament in Macau.

In the following years Kahle manged to win multiple big prizes, which rewarded him a third place on the Australian all-time money list in Poker. In his career he won over $10 million in cashes. In 2022 he did not make a big cash in a tournament..yet.

Number four on the list is Jeff Rossiter, who was born in Adelaide, Australia. He started playing live tournaments regularly since 2011 when he also got his first big cash getting a third place in the Aussie Millions Poker championship in Melbourne. He got awarded with A$ 700,000 for getting third. Fellow Australian David Gorr managed to win the tournament battling well known poker pro´s like Patrick Antonius and Sorel Mizzi.

In 2012 he won his first major tournament in Macau, when he won the ACOP warm-up for $229,276 battling Joseph Cheong who ended up in third place. His biggest cash ever was also in Macau, in 2013. When he got the second place in the Guangdong Asia Millions. This second place meant he earned over $3,000,000 when het lost a heads-up against a German Niklas Heinecker. The final table was a tough table with opponents such as Isaac Haxton, Sorel Mizzi (again) and Igor Kurganov.

However, After 2017 he became less active, his last cash in a poker tournament was in 2017 when he got the fourth place for $330,000 in the Aussie Millions. After that, he stopped playing poker regularly.

Jeff Lisandro, Number 5 on the list, might be the most famous poker player from Australia. Lisandro is the first player ever who won 3 stud events in one year at the WSOP. In 2009 he won 3 bracelets which earned him over $700,000. Winning these three events earned him World Series of Poker Player of the year.

Three years prior to his triple win in 2009, he managed to get a 17^th place in the WSOP Main Event, which awarded him with $659,730. Which was his biggest cash up till then and 16 years later it is still his biggest cash.