Baadshah Gaming Live: Aditya Sushant Ships Main Event, Anup Palod Finishes Runners-up

It was a fitting end to what has been a sensational effort by Team Baadshah Gaming, in the midst of cyclone warnings in the Konkan coastline. Hosted onboard Casino Pride’s rechristened Baadshah Gaming Live poker room, the series saw lower then expected turnouts but nonetheless the series was a grand success with all players voicing positive feedback about the structures and the overall tournament experience.

Closing out the series was the ₹30K Main Event that attracted a modest yet strong field of 66 runners and besting them all was none other than India`s poker poster boy – Aditya Sushant (cover image). He came, he saw and he conquered. That’s an appropriate summary for Sushant’s tournament journey as he bagged the overnight chip lead on the opening day and kept the aggression going to take out most of his final table rivals! He pocketed the ₹7.65 lakhs first place purse after a heads-up deal with Anup Palod (₹6.75 lakhs).

In the post-win interview, the champion said, “The strategy was simple, make minimal mistakes and don’t spew. I caught up just a couple of hours of sleep and was wondering how it will play down today. I wanted to give it my best.”

Palod`s runner-up finish made for interesting story itself. This poker stable operator in the post event interview said, “When the play was down to 15 players, me and Sushi (Aditya Sushant) were speaking about how this would be our first final table together, in my mind, I knew it was going to be heads-up between both of us and that’s exactly what happened.”

Sunday was supposed to be a busy day for us with two events running simultaneously i.e. Main Event final day and 5K Rebuy + Addon event. However the side event was rescheduled and will now be hosted online at Baadshah Gaming on December 17.

Main Event

Catering to the weekend rush, the ₹30K Main Event kicked off on December 9, Saturday with 64 players joining in on the action. The tournament had an advertised prize pool guarantee of ₹30 Lakhs and the low turnout resulted in a massive overlay of ₹10.80 Lakhs.

The top 12 finishers were to benefit from the juicy ₹30 Lakhs prize pool and we were expecting a talent rich final table given the tournaments awesome structure and our prediction was right!

At sharp 7:59, the cards were in the air and a number of known faces were seen gracing the tables including Baadshah Gaming Live CEO Madhav ‘Maddy’ Gupta, WSOP 2017 bracelet winner Aditya Sushant, 10K Warm Up winner Aditya Kumar, back-to-back final table finisher Biswadip ‘Rony’ Choudhury, Dhaval Mudgal, Meherzad Munsaf, Rajnish Kumar, Rahul Agrawal, Lawrence Sanjay, Maria Kirloskar, Anup Palod, Sanjay Taneja, Eka Vedantham, Sunil Mundhra, Niraj Kumar, Amit ‘bblacklegend’ Jain, Vikram ‘Lungi’ Kumar, Ashish Choudhury, Guruprasad Gupta along with many others.

Notables who were in thick of action but hit the rails on the opening day itself include Eka Vedantham, SP Kalia, Santosh Shetty, Shashank Siddharth, Prafull Hasbe, Firoz Khan, Dhaval Mudgal, Guruprasad Gupta, Hardik Shah, Haresh Kukreja, Sanjay Taneja, Lawrence Sanjay, Goonjan Mall, Himanshu Arora, Sunil Mundhra, Saurabh Bhatia, Sameer Tavanandi, Bharath Jayaprakash, Pankaj Gupta, Amit Gupta and Rajnish Kumar.

At the end of the day’s play, the field was down to 26 players before the bagging started with eventual champion Aditya Sushant leading the way with 75,300 in chips.

Day 2 Recap

Day 2 play commenced at sharp 4:20 pm on Sunday and action took off right where it has left with Siva Adityan (26^th place) going out on the very first hand of the day.

Then the barrage of eliminations began with bustouts happening left, right and center! These included Rahul Agrawal (14^th place), Harsh Dembla (15^th place), Ashish Choudhary (16^th place), Anhish Singh (17^th place),Prarabdh Garg (18^th place), Lokesh Thakkar (19^th place), Rohit Chauhan (20^th place), Ritesh Goyal (21^st place), Pranav Bathija (22^nd place), Ashraf Ali (23rd place), Kanishka Samant (24th place) and Maria Kirloskar (25th place).

Finally, the money bubble burst on PokerBaazi pro Vikram ‘Lungi’ Kumar with his attempt to take down the 7-2 bonanza falling flat. Well, for those unaware, Baadshah Gaming had put up a 7-2 bonanza promotion during the series wherein any player who won a hand with 7-2 got 10% of his buy-in back. Any player who managed to win four hands with the worst starting hand in poker, got his entire buy-in back! Kumar was on his fourth bounty and shoved with and Aditya Sushant woke up with to win the hand that eliminated Lungi on the money bubble.

Eliminations continued unabated with Gokul Krishna (10th place for ₹60,000), Manish Adnani (11th place for ₹60,000) and Neeraj Kumar (12th place for ₹60,000) all falling in quick succession to form the official nine-handed final table.

Final Table Chip Counts

1. Anup Palod – 232,300
2. Aditya Sushant – 181,900
3. Mukesh Chawla – 138,200
4. Anik Ajmera – 125,100
5. Sunny Vijaywargi – 96,100
6. Romit Advani – 57,500
7. Ronak Agrawal – 53,700
8. Meherzad Munsaf – 49,200
9. Natansh Basandra – 32,000

Final Table Recap

Mukesh Chawla was the first to fall in spite of starting the final table third in chips. Chawla opened, Aditya Sushant 3-bet and Chawla jammed holding . Sushant called tabling a better and won on the board .

Aditya Sushant was an unstoppable force thereon as he went on to eliminate Romit Advani soon thereafter. Advani shoved holding and Sushant called tabling . Advani lost on the board relegating Advani to the rail in eighth place.

Sushant was merciless and soon claimed his next victim in Sunny Vijaywargi. Sushant opened, and Vijaywargi shoved holding . Sushant called tabling and railed Vijaywargi on the rundown .

Anik Ajmera fell next, after he open shoved holding and eventual runner up Palod called with . Palod hits top pair on the board board that sent Ajmera packing in sixth place.

Natansh Basandra was looking strong but Palod took him out. Aditya Sushant opened, Palod 3-bet and Basandra shoved his 10 big blind stack with pocket eights. Sushant folded, Palod called tabling pocket queens to take out Basandra.

Meherzad Munsaf’s roller coaster run then ended in fourth place. Anup Palod open shoved with and Munsaf called off with . Palod paired his king on the flop to rail Munsaf.

Short-stacked Ronak Agarwal fell next in third place after he open shoved with and Sushant snap called with . Sushant hit a pair on the board and Agarwal busted to set up the heads-up battle.

Both Palod and Sushant entered the final table as the top two stacks and fittingly reached heads-up. Sushant started with a substantial chip lead over Palod and soon the duo struck a deal. Sushant locked in ₹7,65,000 while Anup Palod sealed a payday of ₹6,75,000.

The short heads-up then began and in no time, the champion was crowned.

The final hand of the event saw Sushant open, Anup Palod called and checked the flop . Sushant fired a bet, Palod 3-bet and Sushant called to see the turn . Palod bet, Sushant called and the river completed the board. Palod shoved holding and Sushant tank called tabling for two pairs to add another title to his name!

Final Table Results (INR)

1. Aditya Sushant – ₹7,65,000

2. Anup Palod – ₹6,75,000

3. Ronak Agarwal – ₹3,60,000

4. Meherzad Munsaf – ₹3,00,000

5. Natansh Basandra – ₹2,40,000

6. Anik Ajmera – ₹1,80,000

7. Sunny Vijaywargi – ₹1,20,000

8. Romit Advani – ₹90,000

9. Mukesh Chawla – ₹90,000