Given that the online poker community’s collective attention is focused on the ongoing PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP), it comes as no surprise that the subject of players missing from the roster of Team PokerStars Pro surfaced on the forums. Among those pros reported as MIA were Hevad Khan, Gavin Griffin, and Peter Eastgate.
Griffin appears on the PokerStars.net website in a thumbnail for Team PokerStars USA. However, when the Team PokerStars USA roster is displayed, he is nowhere to be found. Griffin became poker’s first Triple Crown winner after taking down events on the World Poker Tour (WPT) and European Poker Tour (EPT) to go along with a World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet.
His WSOP hardware came in 2004, when Griffin won a $3,000 Pot Limit Hold’em event for $270,000, besting a final table that included Gabriel Thaler and UB.com front man Phil Hellmuth. Three years later, Griffin was off to the races again, this time after winning the EPT Monte Carlo Grand Final for $2.4 million. He defeated Canadian Marc Karam heads-up in a final eight that also featured Søren Kongsgaard, bracelet winner Steve Jelinek, and Irishman Andy Black.
Griffin rounded out the high-stakes live poker Triple Crown by taking down the WPT Borgata Winter Open in 2008 for $1.4 million. Griffin turned heads after the rare feat and posters on TwoPlusTwo questioned the logic of PokerStars apparently not coming to terms with the 29 year-old: “Not resigning Gavin was a mistake, imho. Triple Crown winner not good enough?” Another TwoPlusTwo member added, “The dude’s still got plenty of credentials. I’d imagine his contract came up and they couldn’t agree to a new one, rather than him just getting the boot.”
Khan, meanwhile, burst onto the scene following his lively antics during the 2007 WSOP Main Event. His actions prompted a player celebration rule dubbed the “Hevad Khan Rule” due to his ape-like victory dances throughout the tournament. Khan wound up finishing sixth in the 2007 Main Event for nearly $1 million.
In late 2008, Khan followed up his performance by winning the Caesars Palace Classic Championship Event for an even $1 million, besting a pro-heavy final table that included Michael Kamran, Jonathan “FatalError” Aguiar, Adam “A_Junglen” Junglen, and two-time bracelet winner John “World” Hennigan. The following January, Khan won a $1,850 preliminary event during the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure for $200,000.
According to the HendonMob database, Khan has not cashed in a major live poker event since June 2009. Griffin, meanwhile, has just two live cashes to his credit this year, including a final table in the California State Poker Championship in Los Angeles.
The lack of results led some to believe that Khan and Griffin were simply burnt out from the poker grind. To that end, one TwoPlusTwo poster charged, “Am I the only one who got the impression that they just weren’t ever that big into poker? Or at least didn’t seem like they wanted to be doing it professionally for ten or so years? I can’t really explain why, but just kinda how they came across to me.”
During the 2010 WSOP, PokerStars brought onboard David Williams and Vanessa Selbst. Williams, a former Bodog pro, was fresh off winning the WPT Championship at the Bellagio, while Selbst took down the PokerStars North American Poker Tour (NAPT) Mohegan Sun Main Event. The site boasts a high-powered group of former Main Event champions including Tom McEvoy (1983), Chris Moneymaker (2003), Greg Raymer (2004), Joe Hachem (2005), and Joe Cada (2009).
Eastgate, who won the Main Event in 2008, may also be on the outs with PokerStars after announcing that he’s taking a break from poker. Eastgate is not on the Team PokerStars Pro roster, although, like Griffin, his image still appears in a thumbnail. An e-mail placed to PokerStars to clarify the pro situation was not returned as of press time.
PokerStars has increasingly diversified away from the United States, running live tournaments in Asia, Europe, Australia/New Zealand, and Latin America.
