Home / Poker News February 2014 / Joe Hachem and Jerry Yang Spar over WSOP Championship Legacy
Joe Hachem and Jerry Yang Spar over WSOP Championship Legacy
Posted by: Randy Williams - Mon, 2014-02-10 05:02
The Aussie Millions are obviously a great source of high stakes poker action, and apparently, of controversial statements as well. Joe Hachem, Australia’s very own WSOP champion, had a few choice words in an interview for Jerry Yang and Jamie Gold, the 2007 and 2006 champions, who followed right after his 2005 win, and who – in his opinion – have ruined the legacy of the WSOP Champion. According to Hachem, Yang and Gold’s victories have triggered a move away from the original significance of the title towards money. Indeed, both Gold and Yang took down massive prizes, and they were both marred by various scandals in the wake of their
WSOP Main Event wins. Neither of them became mainstays of the live poker scene after their wins, and thus many have proclaimed them both as having failed to assume the responsibilities bestowed upon them by the title, shying away from becoming ambassadors of the game and generally seeming content fading into the background, money in pockets.
Of the two players targeted by Hachem, Yang chose to defend himself and his record as an ambassador of poker. In an interview, Yang said that while he couldn’t play as much poker as some of the champions that came before him, he was committed to the cause and he put in a lot of charity work to forward the public perception of the game. He said he hadn’t heard of any other WSOP champions to have contributed as much to charity as he did. He said Hachem may have held the fact that he had had to auction off his bracelet against him, but he made some mistakes which he needed to settle and he was forced to resort to that course of action by circumstances beyond his control. He also mentioned he hadn’t really heard anything about what Hachem had done as an ambassador of poker.
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