5 Minutes Read
In an electrifying event that lasted almost 12 hours, Bengaluru-based poker pro and entrepreneur Praveen Dwarkanath (cover image) emerged the champion of the HiFi Poker Tour 50K Main Event, defeating a field of 49 players. “It feels great, it has been a great win, a great year actually, I am astonished”, he later said.
The 38-year old Dwarkanath was partner at the Rockets poker room until he parted ways in May this year to start his own online poker site Poker Ninja. He also has several scores to his credit including a first place ina $225 NLH event at the Wynn Casino at Las Vegas in April this year.
It was a night that saw the regular grinders come out to claim the top spots, with Thrill Poker Pro Shravan Chhabria making a fabulous second place finish and Rohit Tiwari playing an excellent game to finally end at third place.
Chhabria has been increasingly making his presence felt the past many months with an enviable record, both live and online. He started out by winning the Deltin Poker Tournament in January, with many more cashes in Macau, Manila and the World Series of Poker (WSOP), besides a deep fourth place finish in the Mini-WCOOP Main Event among other scores.
Tiwari shot to fame first in March, 2015, when he won the THOS “Thaliava” 36K Highroller and followed it with another big title at the Deltin Poker Tour 60K Highroller event in August.
HiFi 50K Main Event – Recap
The second edition of the HiFi Tour began yesterday at the Indian Poker Association (IPA) poker room in Kolkata at 5pm. The city was agog with the congregation of both local and outstation regulars and the announced guarantee was crushed at the start of the 50K Main Event with a total of 49 entries registering for the event.
Looking across the room, we could spot notables such as Team PokerStars Pro Aditya Agarwal, Sahil Agarwal, Shravan Chhabria, Vikram Kumar, Navkiran Singh, Rajeev Kanjani, Sailesh Lohia, Rohit Madhur, Praz Correa, Sahil Chuttani, Sharad Rao and Pranay Bachhawat among others.
Early eliminations included Vikram Kumar, even as Aditya Agarwal was seen doubling up twice after coming down from a starting stack of 40,000 to just 5,500.
Praveen Dwarkanath was another player consolidating his stack and a crucial hand saw his get a double up from Sharad Rao’s with the board delivering to give him a straight.
Also making progress was Shravan Chhabria, who won a big pot early on with ace-king against Rupesh Niharia’s ace queen.
Aditya Agarwal was seen enjoying the event, even as he smilingly exited at around 10pm. The man to rail the Indian legend was Nitesh Agarwal in a hand that saw both players allin on the flop @8s.
Adtiya Agarwal:
Nitesh Agarwal:
The turn seemed to favor Agarwal with but the river of gave Nitesh a better two pair and Agarwal was busted out of the tournament.
Final Table
Eliminations continued and by midnight the field was down to 11 players and by the time the final table began, Dwarkanath was sitting pretty with the largest stack of 371,000.
Final Table Chip Counts
1. Rohit Tiwari – 150,000
2. Yash Dhandhania – 180,000
3. Nitesh Agarwal – 139,000
4. Shravan Chhabria – 282,000
5. Anil Adiani – 119,000
6. Pranay Bachhawat – 96,000
7. Nihar Hatkar – 321,000
8. Aditya Goenka – 136,000
9. Praveen Dwarkanath – 371,000
10. Pankaj Kothari – 169,000
Mid-stacked Rohit Tiwari caused the tournament demise of Nitesh Agarwal at 10th place. Soon Pranay Bachhawat and Pankaj Kothari exited at ninth and eighth place respectively.
It was time for the money bubble and Dwarkanath busted Aditya Goenka at seventh place, leaving the rest to cash.
The hand saw Goenka open for 88,000 from UTG and Dwarkanth moved all-in, with the rest of the players folding.
Aditya Goenka
Praveen Dwarkanath
The board sent out and Dwarkanath had chipped up to 580,000.
Nihar Hatkar went out in sixth place and the chip lead changed hands, with the aggressive Tiwari (635K) taking over from Dwarkanath (585K). The lead was short-lived with Chhabria taking a large pot off Tiwari, sending him back below the 500K mark.
Tiwari was not yet done and after Yash Dhandhania and Anil Adiani were railed at fifth and fourth place respectively, he tried hard to take the lead.
Three-handed Chip Counts
Rohit Tiwari – 610,000
Shravan Chhabria – 650,000
Praveen Dwarkanath – 720,000
16 minutes later, however, Rohit Tiwari met his tournament demise at the hands of Dwarkanath. The hand saw Dwarkanath open for 75,000 from the button and Tiwari moved all-in from the small blind for 520,000. Dwarkanath immediately called.
Praveen Dwarkanath
RohitTiwari
The board displayed and Tiwari was out at third place.
Heads up was a short one-handed affair, with a deal struck and both Chhabria and Dwarkanath moving all-in blindly. Chhabria tabled a superior against Dwarkanath’s . The board had different ideas with giving Dwarkanatha the winning straight and Chhabria was relegated to the rails at second place.
The poker-entrepreneur was declared the champion of the HiFi Poker Tour Main Event.