With a super value and big guarantees up for grabs across various online events, Sundays have become the most significant days for poker players in the country. This Sunday, it was Sajal Gupta aka ‘sa_jal’ who enjoyed a big win in Adda52’s popular tournament – 20 Lac GTD Adda52 Millions.
Studied at IIT Delhi, Sajal Gupta is one of the emerging online players in the country who started his poker journey just three years ago during his college. He has come a long way in the past 3 years, notching up several big scores across online poker events happening on various sites in India.
A native of Faridabad living in Bangalore, Gupta won last night’s Adda52 Millions wherein he beat a tough field of 226 entries to win INR 7.5 Lac in top prizemoney. He managed to outlast a strong final table that included Pranav Khandalkar (3rd place for INR 2,93,800),Phanindra Akkina (4th place for INR 2,26,000) and the well-known Nishant Sharma (6th place for INR 1,24,300).
Sajal Gupta reached heads-up with Shiv Sahoo aka ‘Ppookkeerr’. The heads-up saw chips swinging up and down and both players kept fighting it hard. Eventually, the last hand came where the online player ‘ppookkeerr’ holding Qc-5c moved all-in and ‘sa_jal’ who held Ad-Kh made the call. The board ran 2d 2s 7c Jh As where Gupta won the pot and event with two pairs – Aces & Deuces.
Post his win, OPN Team caught up with Sajal Gupta and here are the excerpts of the conversation:
OPN: Hi Sajal Gupta, a big congratulation on the win. How did you start your poker journey?
Gupta: Thank you! I started playing poker 3 years ago during my college. I was introduced to Adda52 pretty soon and was hooked straight away. It’s been a great experience so far and I hope to keep improving as a player.
OPN: Coming back to Adda52 Millions, how does it feel after taking down this tournament?
Gupta: It feels great after notching up such a big score online! I had a pretty dry spell on Adda52.com lately, but it was worth the wait.
OPN: What are your thoughts on Adda52 Millions tourney?
Gupta: 6-Max is my favorite format as I play 6-max cash a lot. The tourney was pretty deep throughout and even the shortest stacks had 20+BB, which was pretty favorable for me in this spot since I could realize my edge.
OPN: How tough was the field? And how was your experience in the tournament?
Gupta: Deep in Adda52 Millions is probably one of toughest Indian online fields. However, I was very fortunate to have gotten a relatively softer final table, especially after ‘Dojingbullets’ got out with a pretty sick cooler. The experience was pretty good, I was surviving with a short stack for a long time and then started chipping up after late registration closed.
OPN: Any special moment/hand from the tournament you want to share?
Gupta: There were two huge flips that I won. One was when around 50 players were left and the other was when we were down to the final 3 players. Both were 100+BB pots where I had A–K vs J–J and A–K vs 10–10. I won both and well, that’s the most important skill in poker.
OPN: After this grand win, what are your plans in live and online poker?
Gupta: I have a pretty bad record playing live events, so planning to keep playing online for now. I don’t have any grand plans as such, just trying to play my best every day, not get tilted and keep learning.