Gone are the days when poker was strictly for men in India. The ladies have arrived and they are doing amazingly well with spectacular performances in domestic and international tournaments. While there are several Indian female poker players doing well at the live felts, Adda52 Team Pro Nikita Luther has been just outstanding. She has been working hard on her game and it is showing in her results. She has been consistently posting huge scores especially over the last two years. She has scored yet another big score as she has finished runner-up for $109,300 (INR 75.32 Lac) in the WPT500 Aria Main Event, which was won by England’s Ben Farrell for $155,000 in top prize.
This was the 2nd final table for Luther in the WPT500 Aria Main Event as the Delhi girl had finished 5th for $65,000 in the same tournament two years ago. Just last year, she had become the first Indian female to win a bracelet and now she has become the first Indian to finish 2nd in the WPT500 Aria.
Luther began the final and third day of the WPT500 Aria as third in chips among the final 9 players. She started off well by winning some pots from the start of the FT chip leader Ben Farrell and kept going strong all the way to heads-up play where she began with 21,100,000 (70bb) as the chip leader against UK’s Ben Farrell who had 17,525,000 (58bb). In heads-up, she began well by taking down the early two pots and extended her lead to 84 BB. However, she could not keep her lead and lost of a couple of big pots. Her stack came down to just 5,375,000 when her AK failed to beat AQ of Farrell who clipped a queen on the turn to win the pot and take massive chip lead with 33,250,000.
After coming down to less than 15 Bigs, Luther finally decided to call a shove from Farrell with Kh Qs, which failed to beat beat Ac 5d of Farrell on the board of As 9d 6h 6c 6s. Farrell took down the coveted pot and the title with Full House and Luther ended her run in 2nd place, missing out on the title. Farrell earned $155,000 for making his way past 1,932 entries to emerge as the champion.
There were two Indians making it to the FT in this tournament. Another Indian to finish at the FT was Ritesh Shah and he exited in 8th place for $17,000. Apart from Luther and Shah, there were several Indians who cashed out in the event and they included the likes of Dhaval Mudgal (54th for $2,700), Meherzad Munsaf (83rd for $1,500), Sanjay Taneja (93rd for $1,500), Muskan Sethi (Day 1D – 8th for $1,200), Gokul Parvathaneni (Day 1A – 12th for $1,200), Guneet Kwatra (Day 1E – 38th for $1,200 ), Sriharsha Doddapaneni (Day 1H -29th for $1,200 ) and Kartik Ved (Day 1H – 44th for $900).
Final Table Payouts (USD):
- Ben Farrell – $155,000
- Nikita Luther – $109,300
- Sung Joo Hyun – $75,000
- Min Ji – $55,000
- Trey Morris – $40,000
- Eduards Kudrjavcevs – $30,000
- Jakub Wojtas – $22,000
- Ritesh Shah – $17,000
- Jim Pennella – $14,000
