Who Are The Top 10 Best Australian Poker Players?

Who’s the best of the best at the poker table? Australia is home to an number of talented poker players, but here are the top 10 players in the country.

Think of poker Down Under and you might easily conjure images of the highest-profile Australian poker player of all time, Joe Hachem, who won the Main Event in 2005. But is he the most successful or not?

With some of the very best players in the world hailing from Australia, the landscape has changed in one of the game’s richest locations for producing online poker talent.

Let’s look at the ten best Australian poker players and find out who is number one.

Best Australian poker players

10. Martin Kozlov ($3,376,873)

The 10^th most successful Australian player is Martin Kozlov, who has several major titles in his poker career. Kozlov won the ANZPT (Australia New Zealand Poker Tour) Main Event in Melbourne back in 2010 for almost $190,000.

That title is only one of his four ranking titles, with victories in the Sydney championships in 2014 added to in 2016 in the WSOP Six-Handed Championship and Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open. The latter was the biggest cash of his career, worth an immense $754,083.

9. Mel Judah ($3,607,144)

Mel Judah is a legend of the poker world and has cashed since 1988 in ranking events. With five WSOP cashed before the end of 1990, Judah’s biggest tournament win remains in the 2003 WPT Legends of Poker, where Judah won the $579,375 top prize.

To do this, he outlasted genuine poker legends at the final table such as T.J. Cloutier, Chip Jett, Farzad Bonyadi, Phil Laak, Huck Seed and Chris Ferguson.

8. Alexander Lynskey ($3,862,734)

In eighth place is the talented Alexander Lynskey, whose top prize is the $1.5 million he earned for finishing in seventh place in the 2018 WSOP Main Event.

Lynskey, who also has half a dozen other six-figure scores in his back catalogue, has won the WSOP International Circuit event in his native Australia, as well as a runner-up place in the 2017 edition of the Marathon in Las Vegas, earning him $426,663 although seeing the bracelet elude him.

7. David Steicke ($3,885,427)

Steicke may have flown under the radar for several years, but the Aussie has some fantastic results in his back catalogue, with his win in the 2009 $100,000 Aussie Millions Challenge chief amongst them.

Winning over $850,000, Steicke also won over half a million dollars in the 2011-12 Epic Poker League in Las Vegas. He finished in the top dozen players in the $111,111-entry High Roller for One Drop just five years ago.

6. Jonathan Karamalikis ($4,789,354

Jonathan Karamalikis is one Australia’s most well-known players and coming in sixth on the list. It is perhaps surprising that Karamalikis’ $523,343 second-place result in the 2017 Bellagio Cup represents his biggest-ever tournament result at the live felt. Unique at the felt, Karamalikis has won events around the world, however, and has no less than 10 live results in the six figures.

5. Jeff Lisandro ($5,709,068)

 Known as the ‘Iceman’, Jeff Lisandro’s biggest win in live events was the $650,000+ score he bagged in the 2006 WSOP Main Event in Las Vegas.

Behind that, however, he took down a series of World Series events and has six bracelet wins, as many as Daniel Negreanu and good for joint fifth on the all-time list of winners.

4. Jeff Rossiter ($6,650,070)

Jeff Rossiter has been crushing for years and made many of his biggest cashes in Macau or Hong Kong, which account for five of his top nine results.

Rossiter’s biggest win by far is the second-place result worth $3.1 million that he gained in the GuangDong Asia Millions in Macau in 2013, but Rossiter has cashed all over the globe, including in an EPT Main Event in London in the same year as he won millions in Macau.

3. Kahle Burns ($10,730,710)

Recent winners from Australia don’t come much more prominent than Kahle Burns. Exploding onto the high roller scene, Burns has won a huge number of events in the past two years alone, including a WSOP Online victory in the $25,000-entry Super High Roller in August of this year.

With his biggest cash the $1.3 million he bagged in the Triton Macau Main Event in 2017, Burns is posting some highly consistent online and live results and in years to come, may well sit top of this list. He’s surely closing in on the man in second place.

2. Joe Hachem ($12,693,786)

‘Aussie, Aussie, Aussie!’ as the chant goes around the Rio. When Joe Hachem won the WSOP Main Event of 2005, not only did he bag the $7.5 million top prize, but he took a slice of poker history on the same plate.

Hachem has since won further millions to prove his win was no flash in the pan, becoming a PokerStars ambassador and winning the WPT Doyle Brunson North American Poker Classic a year after his Main Event victory for $2.2m from a $15,000 entry. Indefatigable.

1. Michael Addamo ($ 15,535,688)

What is there to say about the phenomenon that is Michael Addamo? Perhaps one of the most outrageous statistics about Addamo is that he only cashed for the first time this year in May, but across 2021 has won $7.5 million, with his biggest cash the $3.4 million he received for taking down the Super High Roller Bowl in Las Vegas.

All in all, Addamo has four seven-figure cashes in his poker career and is still only 27 years old. Incredible.

Think you can stack up against the best of the best when playing Texas hold’em online? Learn more about online casino games in Australia, or read our online casino reviews to find your new favourite real money poker site.