New Team PokerStars Pro Members
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Press Contact
Susan Lindner / Matt Marcus
Lotus Public Relations
212-922-5885
susan.lindner@lotus-pr.com / matt.marcus@lotus-pr.com
TUAN LAM, HEVAD KHAN, RAYMOND RAHME, AND DARIO MINIERI GO ALL IN WITH Team PokerStars Pro
2007 WSOP Notables Join Poker's Most Celebrated Team of Champions and Ambassadors
ISLE OF MAN, UK, September 18, 2007 —PokerStars (www.PokerStars.com), the world’s largest online poker site, today announced four new members to the fold of professional poker players and world champions on Team PokerStars Pro: Canadian Tuan Lam, South African Raymond Rahme, Italian Dario Minieri and American Hevad Khan from New York. Lam, Rahme, Minieri, and Khan entered the poker spotlight this summer in Las Vegas at the 2007 World Series of Poker, all reaching the top two percent of the playing field in the Main Event No Limit Texas hold’em World Championship and earning more than US$8.9 million collectively.
“Despite being from completely different walks of life and experience, all four players exemplify the talent, professionalism, and competitive spirit upon which PokerStars prides itself,” said fellow Team PokerStars member Joe Hachem. “I am very excited to welcome Khan, Minieri, Lam, and Rahme to Team PokerStars Pro.”
Lam, a former Vietnamese refugee now living in Ontario, has been playing poker for the better part of 17 years. Primarily a cash game and short handed player on PokerStars.com, Lam actually began his career as a poker dealer before deciding to switch seats and get some hole cards of his own. Most recently, Lam finished runner up in the WSOP Main Event outlasting all but one of the 6,354 participants in what was the second largest live tournament field to date. He won $4.8 million for his outstanding accomplishment.
The first player to reach a Main Event final table from the African continent, Raymond Rahme began playing Texas hold ‘em only two years ago, but has already achieved great success including, third place in the 2007 WSOP Main Event and a fourth place finish in the largest tournament in African history. Previously, Rahme had spent the past three decades playing seven card stud while owning and operating his own business and raising six children with his wife, Theresa.
“I am constantly on the hunt for my next challenge and I have always approached life with a ‘never give up’ attitude,” said Rahme. “On PokerStars, there is always another challenge around the corner no matter what your skill level may be.”
Rounding out the Team, online pros Hevad Khan and Dario Minieri are the youngest players to join Team PokerStars Pro at just 22 years of age. Although his online poker career began only a few years ago, Khan has been a gamer since he was a small child and played Starcraft Broodwar competitively starting at age 13. Now a well-known force in the online poker community under the screen name “RainKhan” on PokerStars.com, Khan is a multi-table and sit-n-go specialist whose skills are so refined that he was once thought to be a computer program or a “bot” for playing over 40 simultaneous tables on the site. He finished in sixth place at this year’s WSOP, good for just shy of a $1 million payday.
Likewise, Minieri began his poker career online at PokerStars, playing upwards of 9 tournaments at the same time for several hours per day. In fact, his passion for online poker helped him accumulate enough Frequent Player Points on PokerStars that he was able to purchase his first car free of charge - a Porsche Cayman. Minieri is also one of the few online players that successfully made the transition as an accomplished live tournament player with over $300,000 in live tournament winnings in just a few short years.
For more information about Lam, Rahme, Khan, Minieri and the rest of Team PokerStars Pro, go to: http://www.pokerstars.com/team-pokerstars
About PokerStars:
PokerStars (www.pokerstars.com) is the world's largest and most innovative online poker site with more than nine million players worldwide. PokerStars was the first site to introduce features that became the industry standard and to offer the highest levels of security and customer support in the online poker world. To date, PokerStars has dealt out 10 billion hands and run 50 million poker tournaments, In February 2006, PokerStars.com achieved a Guinness World Record as the first poker website ever to reach the 100,000 simultaneous player mark. The PokerStars Sunday Million weekly event is the largest weekly tournament on the planet with a $1 million guaranteed tournament prize pool.
PokerStars is the title sponsor of the European Poker Tour (www.EPT.com) and the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. Each fall, PokerStars hosts the world's largest online tournament, the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP), which last year featured a record prize pool of over $18 million. PokerStars also sponsors major events around the globe, such as the World Cup of Poker and other exciting tournaments. WSOP Champions Chris Moneymaker, Greg Raymer and Joe Hachem lead Team PokerStars Pro and prove the PokerStars credo as the Place Where Poker Players Become World Champions.™ For more information, go to www.pokerstars.com.
