Joe Hachem has the numbers to prove that he is the highest earning Australian poker player on the all time money list of Aussie poker players. Joe has established himself on the circuit and his name is well known in the poker world. However, in second place is Jeffrey Rossiter from Adelaide, someone who keeps a much lower profile and likes to be out of the spotlight.
Rossiter had a fabulous year in 2013 and earned over $4 million playing various poker tournaments across the globe. His biggest win was at the Guandong Asia Millions tournament in Macau, where he finished second and went on to win $3.2 million in just 2 days. Rossiter prefers to stay out of the spotlight and prefers to focus all of his attention on playing poker. He is only 24 years old and has been playing poker for just over 5 years.
Speaking about how he started playing poker, Jeff Rossiter said
Some friends of mine started home games with a $10 or $20 buy-in, just for fun. After a year or two, a few friends who dealt at Adelaide Casino had home games with a slightly higher buy-in – $50 or $100 – so I played a bit of that and started getting good. I graduated to playing at the casino for bigger stakes, and making regular trips to Melbourne too.
This was how he started and he soon found that he enjoyed playing poker more than he liked studying aerospace engineering. He made a life changing decision during 2009 when he decided to quit his studies and move to Melbourne to pursue a full time poker career. It took him a few years to break into the big league but during Jan 2011, Rossiter made it big when he came in third at the January 2011’s Aussie Millions which took place at Crown Casino.
Rossiter’s parents were finally able to see their son make a mark on the poker circuit and were also thrilled to see his pay off, which was around $700,000. Yet, this was only the start of things for Rossiter. He spends a lot of his time studying and preparing for his poker matches as he firmly believes that it is a game of skill rather than one of chance.
During 2013, he played more than 70 tournaments all across the globe and has now taken his total prize money to over $5 million dollars. He believes that one of the best ways to improve your poker game is to keep playing as many tournaments as you can and learn from the experience.
