Dinesh Kumar aka ‘danny_durr’ created waves by winning India’s historic online poker tournament – Gayle Storm on adda52.com. Launched by the West Indian Cricket superstar & now Brand Ambassador of Adda52.com – Chris Gayle, the INR 2500 buy-in, 50 Lac Guaranteed event kept well to its name and went on to become a grand success drawing 2000+ entries, the highest ever in online poker tournament history of India. While the event saw many players including pros from PAN India battling for their share of INR 50 Lac GTD prize pool, it was the 26-year-old – Dinesh Kumar, who won it for his best online score – INR 12.17 Lac.
This win was a like a dream come true for Dinesh as he entered the tournament with a Free ticket he won in a social media promotion by Adda52 and went on to win the top prize.
Expressing his feelings, Dinesh said, “It is a huge-value tournament for small-stakes players with a guarantee of INR 50 Lac in just INR 2500. I feel too good winning this (event) and to wonder I got a free ticket to it from the Facebook promotion. So, I have won that (Gayle Storm) from zero money.”
It was a smooth journey for Dinesh as he remained among the top 30 in this tournament. However, he became a short-stack at the final table, but he played his A-game and won a couple of big pots getting himself back into the game and reaching heads-up with Aditya Chaudhary aka ‘cash9hai’. Aditya battled it hard but could not go all the way. He finished runner-up for a cool INR 6,63,500.
Here are the players who finished on the Final Table of Gayle Strom:
1. Dinesh Kumar (danny_durr) – Rs. 12,17,500
2. Aditya Chaudhary (cash9hai) – Rs. 6,63,500
3. Akshay Shah (paare3) – Rs. 4,50,000
4. Sagar Sahni (hunter1602) – Rs. 3,20,000
5. Ankush Aryan (invincible29) – Rs. 2,07,500
6. Ashit Sharma (nexus010) – Rs. 1,45,000
7. Arpit Batra (Shinigami21) – Rs. 1,20,000
8. Vivek Singh (Vivek94540) – Rs. 95,000
Talking about the field and his journey, Dinesh said, “The field of Gayle Storm was as good as it gets consisting a lot of good Indian pro players and also having enough pool of weak players. My journey through the tournament was smooth and I remained among the top 30 all the time. I went short on the final table but made it work from there. Cards felt my way and I couldn’t have asked for more”.
Talking about Chris Gayle, he said, ” A large number of fans must be following him, so with Chris Gayle promoting this amazing sport (poker) in India, I hope a lot of people will give it a try.”
Hailing from Delhi, Dinesh Kumar stumbled upon poker in the second year of his college when some seniors at IIT Delhi introduced the game to him. The very moment he learned the game, he fell in love with it. His life took a new turn. He played the game for 1-2 years and then took a rest from it.
Later on, he got back into the game on the serious grind when Adda52’s Big Millions winner Kalyan Chakravarthy offered him the help in playing and learning the game. For over 2 years, he also practiced the game in college with Abhishek Kumar. Dinesh began honing his skills by participating in the smaller buy-in online events but he gradually switched to the bigger buy-in tournaments.
What started as a hobby a few years ago has now become a profession for Dinesh. He is putting up a lot of efforts and it is showing up in his results. While Gayle Storm win gave his career’s best score, it was not his first cash on adda52.com as he has already notched up several online scores here.
Dinesh now has his eyes set on super-value tourneys happening on adda52.com and other Indian websites. That said, he has no plans for live poker as of now and wants to stick to grinding online.