The India Poker Championship (IPC) got off to a great start at the Big Daddy casino in Goa with its opening event – the 10K Kick-Off event drawing an impressive 315 entries. All eyes were then set on the IPC 100K High Roller event of the series, which kicked off on Thursday and went on to become a huge success, drawing a record field of 210 entries to surpass its previous 207-entry field and collect INR 2.03 Crores in prizemoney. Taking the lion’s share of the prizepool was once again a Bengaluru-based player in Anmol Srivats who defeated the well-known pro Zarvan Tumboli in HU and earned INR 39.37 lac for his win.
Srivats is a young talent with over $1 Million in online cashes. While he has a lot of experience of playing poker professionally, his victory in the IPC High Roller event was his first-ever major live title. He began Day 2 of the event with an average stack among the 58 runners. He did well on the day to reach the final table with a massive chip lead, much ahead of the start-of-the day chip leader – Raag Fernandes.
While Srivats lost his chip lead several times on the final table, he came back strongly and busted Sahil Agarwal in fifth place. He finally reached 3-way play with Raag Fernandes and Zarvan Tumboli. During 3-way play, an ICM deal was struck with Srivats in the chip lead, Fernandes second and Tumboli third.
Just a little later after the deal was agreed, Srivats eliminated Fernandes in third place to enter the heads-up play with Tumboli. Fernandes had pocket Kings and hit a full house on the 4K4 flop but got unlucky after another 4 landed on the turn to give Srivats (who held 6d 4s) a quad to win the pot.
That gave Srivats a huge chip lead to enter HU with Tumboli, who was dealt pocket Nines and jammed on the very first hand. Srivats who had Qh 3h made the call. The board ran out J-3-3-2-6, giving the pot as well as the title to Srivats and Tumboli had to settle for the runner-up prize of INR 30.59 Lac.
Top 24 finishers were paid in the high roller event with a min-cash of INR 1,88,400. Some notables to finish ITM were Goonjan Mall (10th for INR 4.46 Lac), Gaurav Sood (11th for INR 4.46 Lac), Vaibhav Sharma (12th for INR 4.46 Lac), Jai Saha (13th for INR 3.76 Lac), Anil Adiani (14th for INR 3.76 Lac), Ayush Garg (17th for INR 3.12 Lac), Sriharsha Doddapaneni (19th for INR 2.29 Lac), Rajat Sharma (21st for INR 2.29 Lac), Apoorva Goel (22nd for INR 1.88 Lac), and Siddarth Singhvi who finished 23rd for INR 1.88 Lac).
Final Table Payouts (INR):
- Anmol Srivats – INR 39,37,812
- Zarvan Tumboli – INR 30,59,847
- Raag Fernandes – INR 37,73,340
- Harshad Barve – INR 12,70,100
- Sahil Agarwal – INR 9,80,800
- Kanishka Samant – INR 8,12,800
- Vivek Rughani – INR 6,92,600
- Anish Patra – INR 6,04,000
- Akash Shekhar – INR 5,18,200