It’s always good to see new faces performing at the tournament felt and nothing comes better as one of them winning the event title. Divyesh Shah was just another player when walking into the Deltin Royale poker room on Friday (June 6) afternoon but after a grind in the 10K Freezeout event of India Poker Championship (IPC) which lasted 12 hours, he walked off as the champion. In addition to Rs 3,60,000 in the top prize he inscribed his name for the first time in the record books of Indian poker tournaments.
Tournament Round-up
The IPC 10K Freezeout event drew 207 players creating a prize pool of Rs 17,59,500. Sameer Rattonsey, Kanishka Kapoor, Abhishek Panda, Rajat Sharma, Adda52 Team Spades pro Amit Jain, Team Thrill pros Jasven Saigal, Kavish Kukreja and Sahil Agarwal were among the notables in the field of the 2nd event of IPC June. The organizers announced the payout for top 21 finishers with the lion’s share of Rs 4,50,000 for the champion of the night.
Early Action
Players took their seats with 7,500 chips in the starting stack and an aggressive battle in the beginning saw many players busting out. Arsh Grover and the IPC Jan’15 10K event champion Shashank Desai were among early eliminations. IPC April’15 opening event champion Abhishek Panda couldn’t withstand Paawan Bansal’s trips of Kings while Jasven met the bigger pair of Vivek Kajaria which ended his tournament run.
Wasim Rozani too departed early in the tournament when Jaideep Nag’s pocket 3s ran over his . Meanwhile, Romit Advani, Rajeev Raut, Prabhakar Che and Mukunda Dasharathy were going strong in the contest with sizeable chip stacks.
Midway Play and ITM War
Once the dust of early action settled down, the bigger stacks started to dominate the tables and shorter ones started falling. Tournament regulars Anup Palod and Rajat Sharma busted out while Adarsh Jayappa, Tushar Bharti and Romit Advani progressed towards gaining the monstrous stacks. In a 3-way action between Amit Ajwani, Vishal Tajpuria and Gurprasad Gupta wherein each player has one Ace in hole, Vishal hit a pair of 2 on flop eliminating the other two.
Tushar Bharati was the first player to attain a 6-figure stack size while Tushar Makhija was also going strong with over 70K stack. A minimum cash of Rs 18,000 was guaranteed for the top 21 players and the field found its bubble as in Vikas Singh who shoved his stack of over 60K with Pocket Nines against Niranjan NJ who had Kings . The dealer brought one more King on the flop ensuring Niranjan the money.
Race to the Final Table
Once the top 21 players were assured of cash in the event, everybody fired to land on the final table of the IPC 10K Freezeout event. Prabhakar Che, Hardik Shah and Zulfikar Ali Mirza, Romit Advani and Gaurav Mittal – the 5 players got eliminated in a flash of time on different tables taking home Rs 18,000.
In a 3-way pot Karma Gurung’s rockets dominated Saurabh Sahrma’s cowboys and Anderi S’ eliminating both of them. Abhishek Chachra hit the rails in 10th position setting up the final table led by Niranjan NJ with 3,34,000 chips.
The Final Table Battle
All eyes on the title and the top prize, the final table battle kicked off around 12:30. Prasanna Jayappa and Tushar Makhija were the first two players to big good bye from the final table after which game slowed down. Anudeep Srinivas hit the rails in 6th place when his were ran over by Adarsh’s straight. Half an hour into the play, Adarsh hit the rails in 4th place leaving Karma Gurung, Maulik Shukla and Divyesh Shah for the 3-way action. 3 of them struck a deal ensuring Rs 2,75,000 for each of them and rest of the money with the title in the contest.
After a few hands, Karma Gurung walked off in the 3rd place leaving Maulik Shukla and Divyesh Shah for the heads-up. Divyesh got lucky in the final hand played hitting a 4 card runner-runner flush. The action started with Maulik moving all-in with which Divyesh called with . The board ran crowing Divyesh Shah as the champion of the IPC June’15 10K Freezeout event. He took home the top prize of Rs 3,20,000 with the IPC event trophy.