My name is Kian Tavakoli, and I play with the username of “Kiant” on Poker Stars and Poker Host Yeah real original handle, no? Actually it sounds like Chianti, the wine made in Tuscany; given that I’m a winemaker making my living here in the Beautiful Napa Valley in California, I thought it fit fine. I’m 36 years old, was born in Iran to a Persian father and a French mother. I’m married with one two year old daughter and another one on the way due in September. I started to seriously play poker, namely NL Hold'em in late 2003 and I’ve been a member of the Ace10.com Forum since the first part of this year. In the picture above I’m holding my winning cards, the J8 of clubs. I hit top pair on the flop and the rest is history. Before that last hand played out I had over 100K chips to my opponent’s 20K chips. What’s really crazy is that with 13 players left, I was second to last in chip position; once we were down to the final table (10 players), I went on a crazy run where I amassed some serious chips three hands in a row and the table whittled down to 5 players. Once we were down to heads up, it took two hands to dispose of my opponent.

Cheers, Kian