Amit ‘bblacklegend‘ Jain topped a field of 848 players and won the Sunday 500 on Pokerstars to mark his biggest poker victory ever. This is the first time an Indian has won the $530 buy-in Sunday 500 and for sure ranks in the ‘top 5’ online poker wins by an Indian ever. OPN chatted with the poker player from Mumbai and this is what he had to say:
- How was it playing on the Sunday 500? Did you fancy your chances?
AJ: I had won a satellite to the Sunday 500 and though was on vacation with my family, I wanted to get a feel of the action. I generally play the $200 buy-in poker tournaments and have been training myself for these deep structure tourneys. I knew how to handle this tourney but didn’t fancy my chances on winning in the beginning. But through the 12 hour competition, I was pretty deep and was chip leader almost 80-90% of the time.
2. How was it on the final table of the Sunday 500?
AJ: I was in chip lead for the last 7-8 hours but I knew there were many better players in the tourney. Specifically on the final table, all the deep stacks and big players were towards my left giving me a disadvantage.
3. Did you strategise on how to go about this deep-structure poker tournament?
AJ: I have been practising on this tourney structure for some time now and knew I could last through the length of it. I didn’t want to get into a spot in the early stages and stayed away from big games pre-flop towards the beginning.
4. How do you think this will impact the Indian poker fraternity?
AJ: This win will definitely inspire more new players to try playing online. After Aditya Sushant chopped the Sunday Million six months back, we all were really inspired that Indian’s can also win big tourneys. So every good score will make a huge impact towards more Indian players winning the big tournaments.
5. How do you plan to spend the money?
AJ: My friends tell me to buy some jewelry for the wife, (laughs). But actually for now, I just plan to book some profits, keep some for future tournaments and also utilise some towards the upcoming Macau Poker Cup where I am doing the full schedule along with my friend Kavish Kukreja.
OPN congratulates the young marble businessman who takes time out for poker, family and work on this big win and wishes him all the best for MPC. Jain who started playing poker regularly 2 years back now grinds about 5 times a week. His initial thrust into poker came when he won the Bombay Poker Championship organised by India Poker Championship(IPC) a few years back. Since the past 2 years , Jain has not looked back and is making his mark both in online as well as live poker tournaments.