Hun Wei Lee has beaten his own poker idol for one of the biggest live tournament titles of his career. The Australian grinder defeated 2005 World Series of Poker Main Event champion Joe Hachem in a heads-up battle that stretched more than two hours at Crown Melbourne, claiming the $2,500 Main Event title at the 2026 Victorian Poker Championship and the AUD 350,000 top prize that came with it.
The result is the second Crown Melbourne title Lee has banked in just six months, and it adds another high-profile scalp to a resume that already includes a World Series of Poker bracelet. For a player who has openly cited Hachem as a formative influence on his own game, beating him for a trophy in his home city is the kind of story line poker rarely writes so neatly.
A Marathon Heads-Up Battle for the Victorian Poker Championship
The $2,500 buy-in Main Event drew 715 entries, a field large enough to build a prize pool of AUD 1,573,000, comfortably one of the biggest domestic tournaments on the Australian calendar this year. Lee arrived at the final table holding the chip lead after grinding through three days of play, and he did not let go of the advantage easily.
Along the way to the final two, Lee put together a string of knockouts that saw him bag up close to a quarter of the chips still in play, a dominant position that set up his run at the title. One of the eliminations drew particular attention: deep in the event, Lee knocked out Anthony Hachem, Joe’s brother, in 14th place with a river bad beat, pairing his king on the final card to send Anthony to the rail. It meant that by the time the tournament reached its final two players, Lee had already gone through one member of the Hachem family on his way to facing another.
Heads-up play between Lee and Joe Hachem ran long, stretching past two hours as both players traded the chip lead and picked their spots carefully rather than forcing the issue. The match eventually turned on a river card, with Lee completing a set to win the decisive pot and send Hachem to the rail in second place for AUD 210,000. It was a fitting, if cruel, way for the tournament to end for Hachem, who had already watched his brother exit in similarly dramatic fashion on an earlier river.
Beating the Idol: Joe Hachem’s Place in Poker History
For anyone who has followed Australian poker over the past two decades, the significance of beating Joe Hachem specifically is hard to overstate. Hachem became a national sporting hero in 2005 when he won the World Series of Poker Main Event in Las Vegas for $7.5 million, at the time one of the largest prizes ever awarded in the sport and still one of the most celebrated results in the tournament’s history. That victory helped ignite the Australian poker boom of the mid-2000s, inspiring a generation of players, Lee reportedly among them, to take the game seriously as more than a hobby.
Two decades on, Hachem remains a fixture on the Australian and Asian live tournament circuit, continuing to chase cashes and titles well past the point where many Main Event champions from his era have stepped back from regular play. Finishing runner-up at Crown Melbourne, a venue where he has played countless hours over the years, keeps him firmly in the conversation even as a new wave of Australian talent emerges to challenge him directly at the felt.
Hun Wei Lee’s Rise Continues at Crown Melbourne
This was not Lee’s first big score of 2026, nor even his first at Crown Melbourne this year. Back in May, during the Aussie Millions Poker Championship, Lee took down the $25,000 Challenge event at the same venue, a result that already marked him as one of the form players on the Australian circuit heading into the back half of the year. Winning the Victorian Poker Championship Main Event just months later confirms that run was no one-off.
Lee’s broader résumé stretches back to 2020, when he won his first World Series of Poker bracelet online, taking down a $1,050 pot-limit Omaha bounty event against a field of 971 entries. That win, secured through GGPoker’s WSOP Online bracelet series during a period when the circuit had shifted heavily toward digital play, gave Lee his first taste of WSOP gold and set the stage for the live-tournament success that has followed. According to tracked tournament results, Lee’s career earnings now sit above $1.6 million across five tournament victories, with the Victorian Poker Championship Main Event standing as comfortably his largest live cash to date.
What the Result Means for the Australian Scene
Crown Melbourne has long served as the beating heart of Australian tournament poker, hosting the Aussie Millions each summer alongside a calendar of smaller but still significant series like the Victorian Poker Championship. A 715-entry field for a mid-range buy-in event is a strong signal of health for the Australian market, particularly at a time when live poker attendance worldwide has fluctuated series to series.
For newer players watching a result like this unfold, the appeal is obvious: a relatively accessible $2,500 buy-in turning into a six-figure Australian-dollar score, decided over a tense, multi-hour heads-up battle against one of the sport’s most recognizable champions. It is exactly the kind of outcome that keeps mid-stakes live series drawing healthy fields, and exactly the kind of story that reminds newer grinders why understanding tournament fundamentals, from stack management to final-table strategy, matters as much in a $2,500 event as it does on the biggest stages in Las Vegas. Readers looking to sharpen their own final-table game can start with Poker Pro Academy’s WSOP guidewhich breaks down how major tournament structures and strategy shift as fields shrink toward the money.
Looking Ahead
Both Lee and Hachem are expected to remain fixtures on the Australian circuit in the months ahead, with the busy summer tournament season on the horizon in Melbourne. Whether the two cross paths again at a final table remains to be seen, but for now, the story belongs entirely to Lee: a player who grew up idolizing a World Champion and then beat him for a title in the city where it all started.
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