Goa, one of the best tourist destinations in India is also the best place to play live poker in the country. Poker players get an amazing aura to unwind at the beautiful beaches at daytime and to grind at the poker tables across 4 casinos throughout the night in tournaments. Since, India Poker Championship (IPC) made a comeback in January this year, the turnout of poker players at the Indian mecca of poker was revived. OnlinePokerNews (OPN) reached the Deltin Royale Poker room in Goa for the on-going April season of IPC to cover the major events and interact with the pros, the new-gen players, tournament directors, dealers and all sections of people who make such poker tournaments successful in India.
Img Courtesy- IPC
30 K Main Event Day 2: Kanishka Samant takes down the big Prize
Kanishka Samant of Mumbai outlasted Pranav Bagai and a gigantic field of 236 in a marathon of a poker match to take down the IPC Main Event for INR 11,50,000. Delhi’s Pranav Bagai who was making a tourney performance after a slight break finished in second place to cash INR 9,00,000. Ankur Dewani, PokerStars Country Head-India received INR 9,00,000 after the top 3 finishers struck a deal. Saami S(4th- INR 4,21,300), Rajeev Kanjani(5th- INR 3,43,000) and Shashank Desai(6th-INR 2,76,000) completed the top 6 finishes to complete a great poker weekend at the Deltin Royale Poker Room.
Day 2 began with 42 runners led by Robert Askarav. Before the last event of 10K Super Bounty kicked off the field was almost hitting the money. After 12 hours of action, Nitin Gupta was the unfortunate bubble boy when his didn’t find any support on the board after Ishan Punjabi had called him. While Gupta was still in front on the flop- , the turn and river sealed his fate. the final 27 players made the money.
The defending Champion Sumit Asrani fell short this time but made the money to exit in 25th place. Punjabi who earlier eliminated Gupta to make him the bubble boy saw himself on the final table bubble.Punjabi shoved his small stack with but Jaydeep Dawar called with his . Dawar held ground as the board ran to eliminate Punjabi in 11th place.
Kanishka Samant led as the final table was formed with Saami and Anup Palod close behind. He continued to lead even when the action was six handed. On the final hand when Samant called with against Bagai’s shove with . The board ran
30K Main Event Day 1 – Robert Askarav leads the 42 survivors
India Poker Championship (IPC) Main Event drew a good mix of experienced Indian players and newbies making it a big field of 236 runners by the time registration were closed on Saturday night. The Deltin Royale poker room was buzzing with excitement as players took their seat with 15,000 starting stack. The defending champion Sumit Asrani who won a whopping Rs 13.5 Lakhs topping a field of 212 players in January was also in the house. Among the other notables in the field were Abhishek Goindi, Rajat Sharma, Akash Malik, Team PokerStars pro Aditya Agarwal and the 4 Team Spades pros – Amit Jain, Kunal Patni, Muskan Sethi and Aditya Sushant. Pratibha Arya was one the few women players giving competition to this male dominated Main Event field.
With blind levels of 35 minutes and the bigger starting stack, the action rolled out slowly on the tables. One of the IPC organizers, Rajeev Kanjani was leading the field at the time of dinner break at 11 PM. The payouts of the Main Event were announced which injected a new excitement in the field to win from he huge prize pool of over Rs 60 Lakhs. While the shorter stacks battled to survive, the monsters aimed at the top prize of Rs 15,04,500. Top 27 places are to be paid in the Main Event of India Poker Championship this season.
Players kept falling in the battle of survival. Muskan Sethi was eliminated when Pranav Bagai hit a set of Queens with 2 Queens on the board against MUskan’s Ace-King. Madan Kumar, Sailesh Lohia, Rakesh Sharma and Debarshi Chatterji were the notables to bust in the game after midnight. The game progressed till 6 O’clock in the morning with 14 levels of play in which 42 players qualified for the Final Day. Robert Askarav with 1,77,000 chips leads the final list of survivors of Day 1. The defending champion Sumit Asrani is also in the contest with 73,000 chips. Abhishek Goindi (41,000), Dushyant Shekhawat (1,11,500), Amit Jain (1,40,000), Anup Palod (1,47,500) and Jaideep Sajwan (1,21,000) are the notables to join the final day action of IPC Main Event which starts at 6:30 PM on Sunday.
10K Kickoff Event – Sujith S takes down the title with Rs 5,26,000
The long queue at the entrance of Deltin Jetty in Panjim when the sun was setting behind the hills across Mandovi River forecasted a massive turnout in the 10K Kickoff event of India Poker Championship (IPC). Most of the regulars of the Deltin Royale Poker Room joined the cash tables to get in the groove before the tournament battle while rest of the were trying their luck at blackjack and roulette table at the Level 1 of the Deltin Royale Casino. Meanwhile, poker dealers were getting ready with pack of cards for another night-long grind at over 35 tables in the poker room.
At 8:30 PM, the tournament director announced to shuffle up and deal which kicked off the tournament with 214 runners initially. The tournament drew notable players from across the country including Team Spades pros Amit Jain, Aditya Sushant and Kunal Patni alongwith Dhaval Mudgal, Jasven Saigal, Amit Ajwani, Sumit Asrani, Sahil Agarwal, Rajeev Raut and the IPC organizers Sameer Rattonsey and Rajeev Kanjani. The game started with 7,500 starting stack and players across the tables rushed in to pile up chips resulting in early eliminations. However, late registrations were open till the first break which saw players coming in every minute forming new tables. Finally, a record field of 308 runners was set in this event which is the biggest pool of players in IPC history.
With this massive turnout, a huge prize pool was set to be distributed among top 27 places. Rs 6,30,000, a lion’s share of the prize pool was for the champion of the event. Shashank Desai bested a the 219 player field in this event in January season of IPC taking home Rs 4,64,100.
The tournaments ran till around 8 o’clock in the morning crowing Bangalore’s Sujith S as the champion. Sujith who had topped the 3K re-entry event at Tilt Poker Series a few months ago, seized the top prize of Rs 5,26,000 in this IPC event. Ansar Khan was the man to fall in heads-up against Sujit takinh home Rs 4,50,000. Earlier, the Top 3 including Toto Goyal struck a deal which gave Rs 4,00,000 to Toto for his 3rd place finish.
“It feels great to ship the 2nd event in two months, and considering it`s the IPC which is the biggest tournament series in India,” said Sujith on winning the event.
Here are the Top 10 winners on 10K Kickoff event:
| Position | Player | Prize (in Rs) |
| 1 | Sujith S | 5,26,000 |
| 2 | Ansar Khan | 4,50,000 |
| 3 | Toto Goyal | 4,00,000 |
| 4 | Vinayak Lal | 2,48,500 |
| 5 | Dinesh Kukreja | 1,83,000 |
| 6 | Suresh K | 1,30,800 |
| 7 | Sahil Agarwal | 85,000 |
| 8 | Bhavesh M | 65,300 |
| 9 | Pranav Gupta | 52,300 |
| 10 | Kiran B | 52,300 |