This past Sunday was a historic day on adda52.com, as the poker site hosted its ‘OneTime’ – a brand new tourney based on a new and interesting concept of awarding INR 10 Lac for 1st place and INR 1 Lac for every other player making to the final table. The most exciting and enticing part of this tourney was that the FT players (2nd – 8th) could have played 2500 hands on the 100/200 or above cash tables between 15th to 21st July to covert their INR 1 Lac on the FT into INR 10 Lac amount.
Amazed by its interesting new concept and structure, Indian players came out in big numbers making ‘OneTime’ a phenomenal success. The super-value tourney kicking off at 5 PM attracted a record field in the Adda52’s tournaments history with 1467 entries. Outlasting this huge field, which consisted of a lot of pros, regulars and the past adda52 tourney winners, was the 26-year-old Ragesh Mishra aka ‘ragesh91’. He won a hefty INR 10 Lac in top prize, which is his biggest score on adda52.com till date. Ragesh faced Himanshu Arora ‘pirateking7’ in heads-up who gave him a tough fight but couldn’t go all the way ending his coveted run for INR 10 Lac in 2nd place for INR 1 Lac prize.
The tournament came to an end with the blinds running 300000-600000 where the player ‘pirateking7’ holding 10h 9d moved all-in and ‘ragesh91’ holding Ah 3s called. The board ran 4c 4d 7c 3s 8c where ‘ragesh91’ hit 2 pairs to win the event and record his best score on adda52.com.
Ragesh Mishra’s Road To Victory!
Given the massive field with 1467 entries, it was truly a tough win for the IIT Roorkee graduate Ragesh from Greater Noida, who is currently a part of PSL Team Chennai Thalaivas. However, he did brilliantly well playing his A-game, building a decent stack early on and eventually making it to the coveted final table with a huge stack. Although he enjoyed a good run at the final table as well, he came down to just 7-8 BBs during the 4-handed play. Despite coming so down, he did not give up and kept grabbing some decent pots to eventually enter heads-up with 2:1 chip advantage. In heads-up play, he kept his aggression pressurizing his opponent and finally winning the tournament.
We caught up with the big winner and he said, “It feels amazing to win a tourney. It was a very different kind of a tournament and being the winner of the first tourney of its kind is always great.”
Talking about the tournament, he said, “It’s an interesting concept. I think Adda52 did a good job of selecting the perfect buy-in range for this tournament. And the fact that you could have played some amount of hands on cash tables the previous week to get a boost makes it really attractive.”
The member of PSL Team Kolkata Kings Himanshu Arora, who fought well till the end and finished runner-up in this event, was not available for the comment but he must have been very happy for running so deep in the first-ever ‘OneTime’ tourney and taking a cool INR 1 Lac for his efforts.
The Punjab Bluffers mentor Abhishek Goindi aka ‘pomfret1989’ did really well in this event. He was one of the strong contenders for the top prize but unfortunately, he ended finishing 2nd runner-up. We caught up with Goindi who said, “It’s great to run this deep in such a tournament! A bit disheartening to not close it! I lost 99 to a 6 and that’s the nature of the game..! The ICM considerations and dynamics were very different! Top 8 got paid a lakh each and the first place got 10 lakhs! I was pretty zoned in after a long time and felt good about my game! Looking to do well in the upcoming tournaments too!”
We also managed an online chat with the youngster Utkarsh Somaiya aka ‘mathfan’, who was very happy for his deep run and all praise for this brand new tourney. Somaiya said, “I focus on process and happy that I played my A-game. The fact that during later stages before ITM I went All-in only once. Despite taking many beats, it was a smooth ride and to be 5th in over 1400 entries was satisfying.”
Expressing his thoughts on OneTime tourney, Somaiya said, “It is a fantastic format and it is a different format from traditional final table laddering format. It gives great opportunities to non-pros as it is very similar to satellite tournaments. It is a welcome and a great innovation with very few similar games around. It will definitely attract newer players, which is very good for the growth of online poker.”
The final table of this event was really tough with several known faces from across the country. All of them played hard to make it to the 1st place, but it was Ragesh who took it away from them in the end. As mentioned, Ragesh got INR 10 Lac, the rest of FT players settled for a cool INR 1 Lac prize.