An Interview With Hevad "Rain" Khan

By Justin West

On July 17, 2007, Hevad Khan stepped up to the final table of the 2007 World Series of Poker main event. First place would pay its winner the coveted bracelet, and more than $8 Million. While Khan wouldn't win the big prize, he did place in sixth, earning $956,243, just shy of the $1 Million that the WSOP main event payed to its top earner for years.

Before the 2007 WSOP, Khan was most notable for his skills as an online player, having the impressive ability to play upwards of 40 tables at one time. After the WSOP, however, Khan's name was made. Not only is he a great poker player, as evidenced by such an incredible performance in the world's largest poker tournament, but he is quite possibly the most animated and exuberant player to come along in years.

Khan was gracious enough to take the time to talk with PokerPages about his experiences as the WSOP, his goals moving forward, and even those little “outbursts” that helped make ESPN's World Series of Poker coverage so much fun to watch...

Justin: Thanks for taking the time to speak with me. So, what does your upcoming tournament schedule look like?

Khan: I just came back from the EPT. I went to EPT London and right after that I went to EPT Baden. The next thing I want to do is go to the WPT Foxwoods up in Connecticut, and then the Doyle Classic at the Bellagio. I want to go a little bit earlier to play some of the smaller events because that casino is awesome.

Justin: What were your thoughts on the EPT? What's different about playing in a European event?

Khan: The fact that they don't have any preliminary events or a huge bulk of side games going on. They have tons of cash games but they don't run enough throughout the actual main event to keep people there. If you lose the main event you pretty much have nothing to do if you're not very social or adventurous when it comes to checking out the culture of a different country or going out at night.

As far as the actual tournament, the structure is great, there's really good competition. You get to play with a more aggressive field.

Justin: I know that there is a different general style of play depending on where you go in the US. For instance, games in LA tend to have a very different overall feel to them than games in Las Vegas. Would you say there's a different style of play among the European players?

Khan: To be fair, it's a $10,000 buy-in, so you're going to have the same caliber of players as you'd find anywhere else in the world. It's not like just a small percentage of players from Europe are good or a small percentage of players from America are good. I think that in every population of poker players, you'll have a certain percentage of the community that stands out.

The style can be a little different. They don't fold as much, there's more gambling, but that doesn't mean they're any better or worse, it's just a different style that you have to adapt to.

Justin: Were there any particular hands that stood out for you during the course of play at the EPT event?

Khan: Oh certainly. There was one hand against Sebastian Ruthenberg I remember. After an open limp from a weak player, I raised in mid-position to isolate with A-7 suited. It folded around to Ruthenberg in the small blind and he put in a re-raise to 15,000. I couldn't push, because if I re-raised all-in he'd be getting almost 2-1 to call. He tabled 10-2 off-suit after I folded and I just thought, "Oh my God. That was such a well-timed play. I just got my ass kicked." I'm glad I get the opportunity to play with really good players like that.

Justin: Describe to me what's going through your head as you're walking up to the final table of the 2007 World Series of Poker.

Khan: When I'm walking up to the final table, I'm thinking I'm going to make the moves I can to win this tournament, but I'm not going to do anything out of line to desperately get every chip possible. I have no regrets, really. I got in there, I played my A-game. Sure, it's an amazing feat, but probably at that moment I was excited but didn't realize how significant this event was.

I took it in stride. I enjoyed the moment. I know I probably won't ever get there again, but I looked at which players had position on me, how many big blinds I had, what it was going to be like when the next two levels went up because the stats were going to change, who was playing the most pots, who's going to help me chip up when I re-steal. I was ready. I wasn't scared at all. I was just thinking, "Give me hands and I can do this."

Hevad Khan (left) and Phillip Hilm (right)

Justin: Early on, was there any particular player you realized was going to give you trouble?

Khan: Probably Phillip Hilm. He was the only guy that made me fold so many hands from day five on. He was playing really aggressively, really fearless. I didn't get to see a lot of his hands, and when you're playing an opponent and they don't show down hands, you're too afraid to get into a pot with them because they make it so expensive to play with them and see their cards. At the same time, they're chipping up, so it kind of seems like you can't catch up to them.

Justin: Correct me if I'm wrong, as I'm going from memory, but I seem to remember you going all-in in the dark in the hand that would see Jerry Yang eliminate you from the 2007 WSOP final table...

Khan: The thing about that bet is that the amount of chips compared to the size of the pot was so little that I didn't want to have to look at the flop, and then move all-in and have Yang call me. If I'm ahead of his range I'm ahead of his range, it doesn't matter what comes out. Yang is never folding here if he decided to call 4.5 Million and leave me with 3 Million, you know? By shoving all-in, he's getting more than 5-1 to call on the flop. You can fold nothing there.

Justin: Then why not just go all-in pre-flop?

Khan: Basically, with my re-raise, I had a little over nine million. Making it six million looks a lot stronger. It's saying I'm going to be all-in if he plays the pot with me, but it also looks like I want action. If he held something like fives, sixes, or sevens, he's much more likely to fold than if I'd have gone all-in.

Justin: Looking back on that hand, you had A-Q suited and Yang had pocket jacks, so it almost seemed that no matter what you did the money was probably going to get in there.

Khan: Oh, yeah. It was a setup hand. He was raising and re-raising every pot, just running over the table. If I'd have had fives there I probably still would have gotten it in. But A-Q suited is gold against him there. Yang was making it ten big blinds to go pre-flop with hands like eights, seven or eight big blinds pre-flop with 9-8 off-suit. I don't think he understood the relation between the big blind and how much he was putting in, I think he was just going a little crazy. Maybe he did and that was part of his strategy, but having seen how he played I don't think he was.

If people woke up with hands and weren't so terrified of losing at the final table, I think if they'd have re-played it, Yang's strategy might not have worked so well. But for his level of experience at poker, his strategy at that final table was probably the most effective style he could have picked.

Justin: You had a habit of being a little “over-the-top” when you won a hand during the WSOP. Looking back on it, watching the footage on ESPN, do you think you overdid that a little bit?

Khan: I'd say of the maybe fifteen things that ESPN showed about me, in which I was kind of over the top, I only remember maybe two out of the fifteen things. Watching them, I was like, "Wow, that's kind of stupid." It was just me in the heat of the moment. I have always wanted to make that final table. Everybody has... And I finally made it.

As for people who post their opinion about me on a forum, or give their overall opinion that they don't approve of how I acted, they can think whatever they want to think. You live once, and that was my World Series moment. That's all there was to it.

I'm not some guy that's sitting there, "When the camera comes I'm going to jump up and do this! I don't care about that guy." It wasn't like that. Everybody at the table, I was cool with. Even the one guy that told me to be "normal," I apologized to him, because that was the only time during the tournament that I realized I was over the top. ESPN didn't show it but I was singing a song about him for a minute or so, and even then I kind of felt like an asshole. I did apologize because I knew it was stupid. Other than that, I don't really regret anything.

Those were the best moments of my life, and there's not a moment that goes by that I don't wish I could go back and relive it all. Such a surreal experience.

Justin: So did you look at your having placed at the final table of the World Series of Poker as confirmation of your status as a professional poker player?

Khan: Not really. I knew I was a professional before that. In fact, if anything I feel more non-professional now that it's over. I probably don't play as much as I used to now, actually. That's kind of the thing that's sort of a regret, because I love the game.

Justin: That's interesting. So after placing at the final table you're playing less. I would have expected it to be precisely the opposite.

Khan: I do play live a lot more. I went to two EPTs already. To be fair I was sick for about a month and a half after the World Series was over, so that definitely limited a lot of the time that I was able to spend playing poker. I love the WPT. I can't wait to enter Foxwoods and the Bellagio and all the other events. The WPT is my favorite circuit by far.

Justin: Well, thanks for taking the time. Do you have any advice for those out there that are looking to make that jump from successfully playing online, to placing at the final table of the World Series?

Khan: There's no substitute for hard work and diligence. If you're paying your dues, you'll see the results, but there's no substitute for hard work. In due time you can reach whatever level you need to reach. If you put in a lot of hard work, you'll get it.

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Justin West played poker since the age of 17, he spent more than a year earning a living on the green felt; a modest living, to be sure, but a living nonetheless. His aim was at one point to win the WSOP main event, thus causing Hell to freeze over. However, given his penchant for sin and his extreme dislike of cold weather, Justin has put that dream to rest.