Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2007

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Team PokerStars adds to its roster

Tuan Lam at the final table of the 2007 WSOP Main Event.

By Erin Warner

The online gambling industry is emigrating from North America and poker rooms are welcoming the recent diversity by sponsoring a bevy of multinational pros.

The latest additions to Team PokerStars are among best examples of this change in geography. Canadian Tuan Lam, South African Raymond Rahme, Italian Dario Minieri and American Hevad Khan will now endorse the site after being officially added to an existing dream team that includes three world champions and some of the biggest names in the game.

Lam, Rahme and Khan catapulted into the spotlight this summer at the World Series of Poker, where all three made the final table of the Main Event. Minieri, on the other hand, is already a PokerStars star known for playing up to nine tournaments at a time for several hours a day on the site.

"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 2005 WSOP champ and Team PokerStars member Joe Hachem in a release. "I am very excited to welcome Khan, Minieri, Lam and Rahme to Team PokerStars."

Lam is a former Vietnamese refugee living in Ontario. While his name may not be familiar to poker fans, Lam is a seasoned rounder with nearly 17 years' experience at the card table, part of which included a stint as a dealer. Now a professional player, Lam prefers cash and short-handed games on PokerStars.com. His biggest cash by far came at this summer's WSOP, where he made it to heads-up in the Main Event before placing second to world champion Jerry Yang. He won $4.8 million at the tournament.

Raymond Rahme was Lam's final tablemate at the event, where he finished third. Rahme is the first player from the African continent to reach a Main Event final table. Though he has just two years' Hold'em experience to his name, Rahme is no stranger to prestigious final tables: He also finished fourth in the biggest tournament in African history. He is also a regular Seven-Card Stud player who played casually while running a bed-and-breakfast and raising six children.

"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."

One of the youngest members of the team, 22-year-old Khan, is part of a new breed of poker players who grew up with a mouse or joystick in their hands. He's already been playing poker for a few years and started playing competitive Starcraft Broodwar at 13. Khan now plays under the screen name RainKhan and has achieved notoriety as a sit-and-go specialist who once filmed himself playing more than 40 simultaneous PokerStars tables on one monitor.

Minieri, also 22, is known in online circles for amassing enough frequent player points to purchase his first car - a Porsche Cayman - for free. Of late he has made the transition to live tournaments and has cashed more than $300,000 in live event winnings over the past couple of years.

Find out more about Lam, Rahme, Khan, Minieri and other members of Team PokerStars here.

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