World Champions draw the crowds and Joe Hachem, who flew in from the Aussie Millions to take his place on the Team PokerStars teamsheet on the EPT, is a World Champion. For the past two days, he's been performing his tricks amid the media circus; the Scandinavian press is all over the World Series winner and, as is the amiable Australian's forte, he's been only too happy to tell them over and over again what he plans to do with $7.5 million, how it has changed his life, what it means to be sponsored by PokerStars, etc.

Joe Hachem: eyes on another prize

Today, however, it's back to the real work - although he wasn't let off completely scott free. For the first five hours, Joe has been sweating it out under the studio lights of the featured table and, during his time there, watching his aces cracked by ace-king, then a couple of attempted moves not quite hitting the right spot. He was down to around 5,000 at one point today, but no one has earned one of those World Series bracelets without knowing how to get going when the going gets tough.

"He's been excellent value," mentioned one of the television crew, who has seen every hand played by every player on the feature table. "He can play."

Most of us already knew. Joe is back in the hunt now. Moved to a central table to give others a chance in front of the cameras, Hachem returned from the dinner break to a stack of 17,200. There's a lot of play left.