The midweek excitement continues on India’s largest poker site – Adda52.com. Yesterday, the site hosted its inaugural PayCheck, a 20 Lac GTD tourney at INR 2200 buy-in, which went on to become a grand success. The event drew a record-breaking field with 1271 entries, which took the prizepool to a whopping INR 25,42,003. It was a deep tourney, which began at 7:30 PM and lasted for over 10 hours. While it saw many pros, past champions, and regulars, it was Kolkata’s Prashant Jain Bhutoria aka ‘rituprashant’, who won the title for INR 6,16,689, a super value for just 2200 buy-in. 
In heads-up, the young gun – Prashant Jain Bhutoria aka ‘rituprashant’ defeated the well-known – Anuj ‘thekinganuj’ Kumar Kodam, who pocketed a cool INR 3,35,036 for his runner-up finish.
The last hand of the event saw ‘rituprashant’ holding 7c-6c and ‘thekinganuj’ holding 4s-4d. The board was 6d-Qd-4h-7d-7h. The player ‘rituprashant’ won the event with a higher full house.
We caught-up with Prashant Jain Bhutoria via an online chat and here are the excerpts:
OPN – Please tell us about your journey of playing online and live poker
Prashant – I have been playing for a while. I started when I was in college in London. Initially, I played only live tourneys and cash games. Since then, I have been playing on and off, but for the last 2 years, I have been putting in volume and mostly playing MTTs. I have had good scores, both online and live.
OPN – How do you feel after taking down the inaugural PayCheck on Adda52.com?
Prashant – It feels great. It’s been a while I had shipped something, almost 2/3 months back. This one was a super-value tourney and that too just before the PSL. So, I’m feeling really confident and positive.
OPN – PayCheck was based on a new concept. Your thoughts on the tournament?
Prashant – Paycheck was very, very deep. I like to play deep MTTs. The entries/numbers were huge for an Indian poker site. It’s very well-structured and thought-of. Thanks to Adda52 tourney team!
OPN – Please tell us about your tournament journey. Any special hands or moments you want to share?
Prashant – The whole tournament was smooth until ‘cs52’ gave me a bad beat. He chased gutty when I had a set and got lucky on the river. He was a complete fish and I lost 70 percent of my chips. That made me play ‘aggro’ and thankfully it worked my way. So, I want to thank whoever he is. He helped me a lot. At the final table, I was 8th out of 8 players with 5 BBs. For me, the pocket 33 became the pocket AA throughout. Twice, I got double-up at the final table with 33 and then there was no looking back.
OPN – Who do you think were your strongest competitors at the final table in this tournament?
Prashant – I was looking at the chips, not my competitors. I just wanted all the chips at the final table. I hardly knew anyone at the final table except Anuj Kumar Kodam. I was careful while playing against him.
OPN – It was such a long tourney, what do you do to keep going in such tournaments?
Prashant – Yeah, the tourney was pretty long almost 10 freaking hours. I am not used to playing this long on an Indian site, but yeah, I was enjoying the game with some music and was watching the table. The time just flew away. I was running well, so I didn’t realize how the time went away (laughs).
OPN – Finally, where do you see India’s poker industry in two years from now?
On television and Mr. Modi playing poker while bluffing the Indians (laughs). Yeah, it’s growing rapidly. Indian leagues and MTTs are going to be televised and will also take place outside the country. I can see this happening soon.