Yesterday saw India’s premier live poker tournament series – India Poker Championship (IPC) make a comeback to Goa after a gap of almost 4 years. Running at the Casino Big Daddy, the series got off to a strong start with its opening event – 10K Freezeout drawing a record 437 entries to quickly surpass its advertised INR 25 Lac guarantee and collect approximately INR 43.70 Lac in prizepool!
The 10K Freezeout was meant to be a single-day event but the final table of the event extended to the next day due to the massive turnout coming in. The final hand of the day came during level 23 and saw Milesh Jain exiting in 10th for INR 74,300. He was eliminated by the well-known poker pro Kavish Kukreja who took his stack to 1.06 million after the hand to bag the chip lead among the final 9 survivors. After Jain’s exit, the game was paused with 9 players left in running for the title.
Better known for his online exploits, Kukreja has been impressive on the live felts as well. He has already won two live poker titles with his last one coming in September 2017 when he had won the DPT 35K Main Event for INR 18,71,000, his best live score till date. Today, he will be looking forward to shipping the IPC 10K Freezeout and thus adding one more title to his growing poker resume.
Trailing Kukreja in second and third places are 2019 WSOP debutant Siddharth Mundada (970,000) and past IPC Main Event champ Kanishka Samant (950,000). Each of the final 9 is guaranteed a minimum payout of INR 88,100, while the eventual champion will walk away with INR 8.80 Lac!
In this opening tournament of the IPC, Dinesh Singh was the first player to finish in the money and he earned INR 9,550 for his 52nd place finish. Many notables were seen in action and some of them to finish ITM were former IPC Main Event champion Mukesh Surana (11th for INR 74,300), Utsav Taneja (12th for INR 74,300), Parikshit Dhall (16th for INR 50,800), Abhishek Goindi (23rd for INR 35,800), Amit Sur (30th for INR 24,100), Harsh Dembla (32nd for INR 24,100), Paawan Bansal (34th for INR 24,100) and Adda52 celebrity poker pro Minissha Lamba who finished 47th for INR 19,100.
Final Day Chip Counts:
- Kavish Kukreja – 1,06,000
- Siddharth Mundada – 970,000
- Kanishka Samant – 950,000
- Aashvin Prasad – 940,000
- Nikhil R – 885,000
- Manas Kalita – 475,000
- Pradeep Sharma – 405,000
- Shane Oswald – 275,000
- Rahul Tulsija – 105,000