After all the theatrics and histrionics displayed by Hevad “RaiNKhaN” in the past week, I think both the crowd and ESPN producers were a little disappointed in the early going. Khan didn’t seem to be himself. Although he had a playable stack, the heavy early action kept him from getting into pots. And, when Khan can’t get in a pot, he rarely seems happy. Further, we don’t get to see his dancing, nor hear his primal screams.
That has all changed post 3pm today. With play now six-handed, Khan has started getting involved. In fact, even when we thought he would be shut out of pots by raises, he has come over the top. Within a span of just a few minutes, Khan was all-in twice. Neither time did the players in front of him choose to call. Both times, the crowd got a RaiNKhaN Dance treat. After getting some work done, Khan once again fell down below seven million.
The dancing ended about half an hour later when Alex Kravchenko moved all-in pre-flop. From the small blind, Khan isolated with pocket threes. He found he was in the race situation he was expecting: pocket three versus KsJs. A jack on the flop put Khan way behind. He never caught up.
Raymond Rahme continues his patient game, sensing perhaps that his best chance is catch a monster hand and get heads up against Yang. He has been involved only twice in the last hour – first he was in the big blind and faced a raise of 750,000 from Tuan Lam in the cut off. Rahme called, and on the flop of Q-9-6 bet two million. It was too much for Lam.
On the very next hand, with blinds of 150,000-300,000 with a 40,000 running ante, Rahme picked up the big blind and antes with a minimum raise in the small blind, showing 9-9.
The South African PokerStars player – a media wag here thinks Rahme looks like Crocodile Dundee – is now just shy of his 16,320,000 starting stack, but he must be happy to have thus far escaped being flattened by the Jerry Yang steamroller.
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