Player Update: RaiNKhaN

“At the Caesars final table, my responsibility was to win. What mattered was winning. I wasn’t trying to win because I needed money. Sure, now I can buy house or car, but those are materialistic. What mattered to me was being happy.”

These were the words of Hevad ‘RaiNKhaN’ Khan in the wake of his stunning Caesars Palace Classic victory for $1million in October – and given his results this year we think the ’07 ME final tablist has a lot to smile about at the moment.

Of course, the Caesars win was his biggest pay-out of the year and his most prestigious title to date, after coming through 311 entrants to take the $9,800 NLH event. Also at the final table were the likes of Adam Junglen (6th, $147,818) & John Hennigan (7th, $118,255) to demonstrate the quality of the field he faced. But Khan had been proving his worth as a PokerStars pro throughout 2008, starting in January when he took down the Foxwoods Poker Classic for a cool $108,187 (defeating Michael Binger in heads-up play). Khan also cashed in the Main Event again this year (240th, $35,383) where observers were treated to a far more subdued player than the one who terrorised the final table 12 months before.

Though his legendary days of some of the heaviest multi-tabling in poker history may be behind him, Khan has still had time to make some further hefty scores on his sponsored site in 2008. In March he took down the Stars Sunday Warm-Up for $97,856 and he seems to have a real affinity with the $200 tournament, as he came runner-up in the same event just 3 months later for a further $58,410. Just six weeks before his Caesars victory came the biggest online score of his young career, taking down a whopping $25,000 high-roller NLH event for a staggering $125,000. This achievement is even more impressive considering the quality of the opposition: David Benefield finished runner-up and Aaron Jones, Luca Pagano & Brian Hastings also coughed up the whopping buy-in for the 8-runner event.

It seems Khan isn’t even satisfied with over $700,000 in Stars winnings, however, as less than a week after his $1million win he again final tabled the Sunday Second Chance, this time finishing 3rd for a further $26,600.

With live winnings of over $2.2million, a major title and a sponsorship deal under his belt, you would think that ‘RaiNKhaN’ would be a world-class offline player in his own right. When you combine it with his MTT results from this year, it’s clear that Hevad Khan remains one of the top tournament players in the world whether he plays online or offline and we expect that to continue for a long time to come.