Jaideep Sajwan aka Jdsaz is a Bangalore based poker player who started off his poker career in college days at Manipal. After a stable start at the online felt, he took the action to live felt too which pulled off 4 money-finishes by the end of 2015. In 2016, he made a final table finish in the Deltin Poker Tournament 100K Main Event and he placed 3rd in the recently concluded IPC Feb’16 Main event.
Jaideep is competing in the OPN Challenger Series for the $10,000 ticket to the world’s biggest poker tournament. On this page, he is blogging about his progress in the challenger series.
3rd March 2016
Been a nice stretch of results since my last blog entry. Adda52 Live at Rockets had the 5L GTD which Aditya Sushant won. Saby, me and Sahil had a friendly swap in it so that was fun. Post that I put a decent amount of tourney volume online. Barring Saby, we all headed to Goa together, we even convinced my flatmate Vishnu and another friend Arun to do the trip and grind cash games there.
Goa had a full schedule of tournaments lined up for us. Starting with the 10k and ending with the 10k turbo with the higher buy-in in the middle. The cash games were also good, only point of discontent was the stakes had been moved up to min 200/400 20k and barely one or 2 tables of 100/200 were allowed. This was an inconvenience for anyone like me looking to play in a 100/200 100bb game. During the previous series the game used to be 100/200 20k min which unlike Bangalore games used to run deeper cause of the min 100bb rule. I ended up selling my action into the 200/400 games and did well for myself as well as my investors.
Coming down to tournaments we did start well in the 10k and by level 500/1k had a 55k stack. I ended up making a big hero fold against a random in a 3-bet, 3-way pot, and obviously being snap shown the semi bluff of sorts. We had no history and after talking to my friends who had played with him before I knew I had made a major mistake. The pot if my hand had held would have given me a 100bb stack and well into cruise zone for the tourney. After that I ended up getting short and losing it with A10 to AJ on an A high board for a 30bb pot. Sahil”slimshady” Chutani won it so huge congrats to him for this.
The 15k did not too long. I won one bounty as that was pretty much it for the tourney. The third event was the 60k Highroller with a nice 100 player field. I chipped up well during the starting levels only to become totally card dead near the end of the day and having to fold most of my hands because of the action before me. I entered day 2 with the shortest stack of 15bb and eventually losing it 99 to 66 in a standard spot. Arun who was doing his first had also made day 2 with a nice 50bb stack and got a rather sick one. After an open, a guy decided to 3 bet shove for 45bb and Arun made the call on button with QQ. Initial aggressor folded as he was up against A9s. As luck would have it the guy flopped a flush draw and completed it on the river for a huge pot. I had some action of Arun as well so that hurt me as well. (Well, Arun’s ranting was worth it I guess 😛 )
The 30k Main was scheduled for 7pm and we had 3 hrs to kill so ended up playing a 3k satellite. Was lucky enough to win it and also have a short profitable cash game session. Started off the tourney at an okayish table player wise and by the end of 8th level I was moved to another table. This was a table one can only dream off. The table was pretty passive and people limping in. Ran my stack up from a measly 7.5k to 75k till the table became a bit more reggy. Entered day 2 with around 65k and to say the least was showered with good spots. Got kings twice early once against Clawin who had a simple 3 bet shove spot with his 88. I held and got a stack going. Doubled big with 99 against Rajat Sharma’s AJ and after making the money entered the Final table being 2nd in chips. The two players I was most concerned about were Danish and Aditya”bitti”, both to my left, with Adi having the chip lead to start. Not the best table-draw but the not much I could do anything against.
Table started off aggressively by the CL but after a few bust-outs we were down to 7 players with chips being pretty close all around with no one having a huge lead. Then, the hand that I would never forget happened. I open shoved the button with A8hh having a 18bb stack, I got called by Rajat in the Blind Blind with AQo. The flop came Q77 rainbow no hearts which should have by far always meant I was dead with the <1% sign on my hand. As luck,variance or whatever you may call it the runout for the turn and river was 8 and another 8.This lead to Rajat’s bustout and me having a CL on the table. I met Rajat later and he definitely took his sorrows to the bar and one could not blame him for that 😛 . Another bustout and we were down to 5 players .
Amongst the last 5 people we also had Vikram Kumar who along with Rajat Sharma is also an OPN challenger. Being this big a tournament as well as for the field size I had more equity in play because of the challenge. Not that I would have played any different but only that bustout of certain players would be more beneficial to me in the OPN race. We finally did lose Vikram in 5th and Pawan in 4th. There was a bit of talk about a deal 3 way and I offered numbers which were not acceptable to the short stack Aditya. Straight after the talk for the deal I lost a blind on blind hand for 14bb KQ to A4. And few hands later lost AJ to 99 and I was out. The difference in deal numbers and what I got was pretty significant but honestly I don’t rue my decision. They ended up making a deal as soon as I busted and eventually Mukesh Surana won it. Congrats to both of them.
Did not play the final 10k turbo cause I was in the ME FT. Chilled out a bit in Goa for a day more and returned back to Bangalore on Tuesday. This 3rd place finish does well for me in the OPN challenge rankings and lets me stay on top of the leaderboard. There are still 2 months left for the challenge and I will continue to play and generate more points. Thx for reading cheers guys gl.
15th February 2016
Been a bit more than a month since OPN started off with the “OPN Challenger Series” giving an opportunity to few of the grinders in the present Indian Poker circuit to grab a chance to win a seat to the WSOP 10k$ Main Event. I’m planning to do WSOP this year myself so this is one of the opportunities I am gunning for.
The challenge has been going good for me till now although not at the pace of hands played that I would have liked. Primary reason to it would the DPT series which recently happened in Goa and me having to go back home to attend some personal matters. The sudden change in weather had moreover elevated my health issues as well.
I was amongst the few chosen from the starting announcement date of 7th Jan and had started grinding ADDA52 recently only. OPN provided with a starting bankroll of 25k and a few set paraments which would eventually be used to determine the winner and we were set to start. The paraments also included live tourney such as DPT tour and IPC so a good show in them would boost my rankings as well. DPT didn’t go too great with me only one cash which was when I finished 9th in the 100k ME, fell short by 2 spots for a cash in the 25k and pretty much bricked the others.
After returning from goa I did put some time into playing on Adda52 and have been doing fairly okay at it :P. As a side challenge for myself I hope to make 10k while doing to the challenge itself. I have already started looking up Airbnb and flights for Vegas and surely its fairly expensive to make the trip. A lot of friends have made the trip in the previos years and most of them had a few suggestions to chip in. When I say am going to WSOP that doesn’t necessarily mean am gonna be playing every WSOP tourney there. My aim since the time I started playing real money poker in 2012 is to go to Vegas while the series is running and play a few choiced events and otherwise grinding side cash games and smaller tourneys. Anyone reading this and is doing WSOP do pm if you want to split rooms or travel together. This IF IT HAPPENS will be my first trip to Vegas and who doesnt like saving dimes or lets say splitting dimes here :P.
Coming back to the challenge we got updated on the first month results and Vinay has a huge lead against. You can check it out at http://www.onlinepokernews.in/opn-challengers/. Next update is due soon and surely a lot of other guys would have put in volume so there is surely gonna be a change in the ranking order. Lastly want to thank OPN and ADDA52 for the opportunity and a special shout-out to Mukesh who has been the driving force for organising the challenge and coordinating with everyone which trust me is not the easiest task or remotely close to it.