Finally, India gets its first bracelet at this year’s WSOP with the young gun Abhinav Iyer triumphing in Event #84: The Closer – $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em! The 25-year old pro from Mumbai outlasted a field of 2,800 entries to claim his first-ever gold bracelet and $565,346, his career-best live score.
With this win, Iyer became the third Indian to win a WSOP bracelet. The first bracelet for the country came in 2017 when Chennai’s Aditya Sushant & Nipun Java had won the WSOP Tag Team Event. Coincidentally, the year 2018 then saw Adda52 Team Pro Nikita Luther winning the bracelet in the same event. Luther had paired with Giuseppe Pantaleo to play the event and eventually win it.
It has been a great WSOP trip for Iyer. He has collected as much as $ 585,548 from this year’s WSOP alone and three cashes from non-wsop tournaments in Vegas. Iyer had opened his scorecard with a cash of $ 1,258 in Big 50 (Event#3) and this win was Iyer’s 7th cash from the ongoing WSOP series.
While several Indians have won big at the WSOP, Iyer’s win is by far the biggest score by an Indian in the history of the WSOP Series. Last year, it was Paawan Bansal who had recorded the best cash by an Indian in this tournament, finishing runner-up for a whopping $378,765 but Iyer has now broken all the records, winning The Closer for a massive $565,346. Kudos to Iyer for making India proud!
Iyer has been in great form right from the start of 2019. Earlier, he made headlines for winning APT Vietnam ME for VND 2,269,092,000 (INR 69.51 Lac) and now he is back in the news. Truly, he has become an inspiration for hundreds of young aspirants looking to take up poker professionally.
Iyer entered the nine-handed FT as the chip leader with 15.87 Million in chips. He got off to a great start by eliminating Jason Reels in 9th place to extend his lead and then went on to dominate, putting pressure on his opponents and thereby stacking up nicely. The 4-time bracelet winner Shaun Deeb was the most accomplished player at the FT and could have been trouble for Iyer. However, he fell in 7th place and Iyer continued to stack up and keep his lead. He eventually took the massive lead into heads-up with Sammy Lafleur. He had 54,000,000 against 11,100,000 held by Lafleur . The latter tried his level best but failed to make a comeback, eventually finishing runner-up for $349,417.
The final hand saw Iyer with Qs 10s and Lafleur with 7h 7s. The board ran out 3d Ks 9h 10c 3s. Iyer found a ten on the turn and won the title to earn the first gold bracelet for India at this year’s WSOP.
Final Table Payouts (USD):
- Abhinav Iyer – $565,346
- Sammy Lafleur – $349,417
- Sergio Aguilar – $256,298
- Carlos Chang – $189,584
- Patrick Eskandar – $141,432
- Adam Johnson – $106,418
- Shaun Deeb – $80,766
- Steve Yea – $61,834
- Jason Reels – $47,758
