Praveen Dwarkanath, the co-founder of Rockets Poker Room has announced his exit from the poker room management. This announcement comes at a time when poker scene in Goa is on low while the Bangalore is the booming hub of live poker in India. However, Praveen has planned to move on and enter the online poker business in coming months.
Rockets Poker Room launched by Praveen with his partner Santosh Suvaran and Rajeev Raut who managed operations revived the poker business in Bangalore. After moving to the new location at 100ft Road in Indiaranagar, Rockets became the biggest poker club. Using his entrepreneurial experience in digital world, Praveen leveraged social media and other new age digital channels to expand the business. Moreover, his relationship with players and fabulous hospitality provide in the poker room started drawing maximum Bangalorean poker enthusiasts.
The two most remarkable things which Praveen Dwarkanath brought in the Rockets Poker Room were – Zero Credit Policy and Tie Up with India’s largest poker site Adda52.com. Although credits to the player has been one of the lucrative offers used by poker room, Praveen in his new approach of business blended with his experience in marketing strategy brought the zero credit policy to the Rockets Poker Room. He faced player’s protests initially but in the long run players too realized the benefits of this norm especially in terms of faster cash-outs.
The tie up with Adda52.com to establish Adda52 LIVE at Rockets Poker Room proved to be another successful strategic move of Praveen. The tie up brought hundreds of tournament players to the poker room for huge guaranteed events and thus, elevated the poker action.
Praveen shared his thoughts on parting ways from Rockets. He says, “And finally the wheel has come full circle!!
In May 2015, when i took charge of operating Rockets Poker Room at our brand new location Indiranagar, i had in front of me a series of challenges and an objective of making Rockets Poker Room,bangalore’s finest and largest Poker room that excelled in customer experience. Today 365 days later, i bid farewell to Rockets Poker Room and this 1 year has helped me evolve into a stronger and a better person. It has been an incredible journey with partners like Santosh Suvarna and our collaboration with Adda52.
I thank Anuj Gupta of Adda52 personally for all his support all though out.
I move on and out of Rockets Poker Room to pursue my other dreams and follow my other passions.
Will be present in the online poker circuit with my new site coming soon called the Poker Ninja and continue to contribute to the growth of poker in India
I must thank all the people I met during this course who stood bye and supported me.
Special thanks to Madan Kumar who was there right through.
I would like to thank my entire Rockets family, who stood by me and helped Rockets to grow to such great heights. From cashiers,the floor,dealers,marketing team and service staffs,who will now hold the fort in my absence!
Wishing Rockets Poker Room the best of success and hoping that it would become India’s finest poker room very soon!!”
Praveen is currently on USA trip where he has been playing poker at different casinos in Las Vegas. He won the $225 buy-in, $25K GTD daily tournament at Wynn bagging the top prize of $10,000. When OPN spoke to him about the tournament victory, he said, “The tournament was a good structured tournament. I got off to a good start right from the word go and chipped up consistently. By the time we were at level 8 I was chip leading and from there on it was no looking back. Maintained the chip lead to ship it.
The second in chips lost his stack to me when I opened QQ and he shoved on a KQX flop with AK.
My chip lead increased by a huge margin after this.
This is my first major win and I am super excited about it. Considering that I have had a couple of deep runs at Goa recently, I was looking forward to winning a tournament sooner or later. This definitely was not a planned event for me and that makes sweeter.”