It was a historic day for the Indian poker, as the two of our Indian players Nishant Sharma and Vivek Rughani made it to Day 6 among the final 109 survivors in the 2018 WSOP Main Event, which drew 7,874 entries making it the second largest poker tournament in the WSOP history.
Sharma, the emerging talent on Indian poker scene, entered Day 6 of the event with a pretty big stack of 5,800,000, while the young gun Rughani progressed into it with 1,545,000 in chips. Unfortunately for Rughani, he exited the tournament a few hours back finishing in the 88th place for $77,695 (INR 53.48 Lac). It was his career’s best live cash and he beat his previous best score $13,536 (INR 9.05 Lac), which he earned for taking down the DPT Colossus Warm Up Event in April this year. The WSOP 2018 has been turning to be a fantastic series for Rughani as he has already cashed out in 3 events, thus earning over $86K in total on his very first WSOP trip this year.
After Rughani ending his dream run in the 88th place, Sharma was India’s only hope for the coveted gold bracelet. He started the day 6 with a healthy stack and then he further extended his stack after Rughani going out. Playing among some of the best poker players from across the world, Sharma chipped up nicely and was among the top 10 chip stacks when 36 players were left in the event.
However, Sharma’s dream run finally came to an end after losing a couple of big pots. He finished 34th for $230,475 (~INR 1.58 Crore) but broke all the records securing his career’s best live cash and becoming the first Indian to cash out so big in the history of the WSOP Main Event. Earlier, the best live cash was a 71st place finish for $96,445 by Aditya Agarwal in the 2015 Main Event and Sharma has now created history by registering the best Indian finish in this year’s main event.
Both Sharma and Rughani are the WSOP first-timers and what a lovely start for them! They have made our country proud by their fantastic deeps runs across various WSOP events. While both players have cashed across 3 WSOP events, Sharma’s 34th place finish in this event takes him much ahead of Rughani and other Indian players as his total earnings now touch a massive $236,466, which is by far the biggest total achieved by an Indian poker player at this year’s WSOP series.