akshay jain

News Tagged

WPT India: Asif Anis Defeats BPT Kickoff Champion Abhijeet Shetty Heads-Up to Win ₹35K SuperStack 

After successful stops in Vietnam, Japan, Korea, and Australia, the World Poker Tour (WPT) has come visiting India for its third annual stop in the country. Just a day after Bengaluru-based Gurukumar G took down the ₹20K Kickoff, the ongoing series awarded it’s second WPT title to Asif Anis (cover image).

Anis, who is a regular at the Deltin Royale, having played numerous DPT`s and even the last WPT series, went on a dream run last night as he came out on top of 29 returning players from a starting field of 168 entries to win the ₹35K SuperStack title. Along with the boasting rights of winning a WPT title, Anis walked away with ₹14.70 Lakhs in prize money.

That Asif took down the title was unsurprising, looking at how he single-handedly eliminated five tough challengers on the final table, namely, Vidur Singhal, Akshay Jain, Ankit Jajodia, Raghav Bansal and Vaibhav Sharma. With a towering lead over his heads-up opponent Abhijeet Shetty, Asif used the chip advantage well, eventually denying the BPT Kickoff champion his second title in a week.

As the opening event, the ₹35K SuperStack, too, saw a noticeable dip in numbers since last time. With 168 entries, the event generated a prize pool of ₹58.80 Lakhs that was to be distributed among the top 21 places.

With the money bubble looming, 29 players returned to play Day 2 on Thursday, where eight players would have to fall out empty-handed before the money bubble burst. The infamous money bubble tag fell upon noted pro Akshay Nasa who struggling with a three BB stack shoved with pocket nines and was flipping against Mukunda Dasharathy`s jack-queen. Dasharathy hit the board eliminating Nasa in 22nd place.

Akshay Nasa bubbles the ₹35K SuperStack
Akshay Nasa

The start-of-day chip leader Debashis Bal was going strong for the most part and even orchestrated the eliminations of Abhishek Rathod (21st for ₹72,030) and Vijay Duwa (19th for ₹72,030). He busted Abhinav Jain (11th for ₹1.27 Lakhs) on his way to the final table but ran out of steam to eventually finish eighth for ₹1.68 Lakhs.

The other notable eliminations were Mayank Agarwal (12th for ₹1.27 Lakhs), Mukunda Dasharathy (13th for ₹1.07 Lakhs), Varun Vohra (15th for ₹1.07 Lakhs), Sahil Mahboobani (16th for ₹89,610) and Bibek Karki (17th for ₹89,610).

Kshitij Kucheria (10th for ₹1.27 Lakhs) missed his chance at making it to the final table after being eliminated by Raghav Bansal in 10th place. The elimination took Bansal`s stack to 990,000, making him the start of the final table chip leader.

The 35K SuperStack final table
The ₹35K SuperStack final table

Final Table Chip Counts

  1. Raghav Bansal – 990,000
  2. Debashis Bal – 940,000
  3. Asif Anis – 870,000
  4. Akshay Jain – 770,000
  5. Abhijeet Shetty -740,000
  6. Ankit Jajodia – 445,000
  7. Vidur Singhal – 415,000
  8. Harshit Chopra – 375,000
  9. Vaibhav Sharma – 335,000

Final Table Recap

In just the first level of play, Harshit Chopra became the first casualty, leaving in ninth place. By then, the start-of-day chip leader Debashis Bal who’d entered the final table second in stacks, had lost his chip advantage. On his final hand of the tournament, Bal called Asif Anis’ preflop all-in shove with 19 big blinds. Anis, who held ten-six versus Bal’s ace-jack, turned one-pair, and with Bal’s overcards failing to bail him out, he hit the rail in eighth place.

Debashis Bal
Debashis Bal

The next elimination saw the young talent Vaibhav Sharma falling out in seventh place. Sharma has been in phenomenal form with three final table finishes in Goa in the last month. His winning streak started at the IPC comeback series, where he had final tabled the ₹100K High Roller, finishing an impressive third. Coming into the WPT India series, Sharma has already packed in back-back final table appearances. He had finished fourth in the ₹20K Kickoff on Wednesday, pocketing ₹1.89 Lakhs. Almost immediately after busting, he jumped into the SuperStack, where he bagged the second largest stack for Day 2. The shallow stacks and increasing blinds saw fortunes swinging fast, and before long Sharma found himself holding less than 10 big blinds. On his elimination hand, Sharma shoved his seven big-blind stack with only to run into Ankit Jajodia`s pocket queens. Sharma almost made it back in the race to win that elusive live trophy with an ace opening on the rundown x1], but Jajodia took down the pot with his flopped set.

Vaibhav Sharma
Vaibhav Sharma

The next elimination saw the well-respected pro and start of the final table chip leader Raghav Bansal hitting the rail in sixth place. Bansal was also short and shoved with but needed help against Vidur Singhal`s . The rundown brought the tournament down to five-handed play.

Raghav Bansal
Raghav Bansal

The sequence of eliminations landed on Ankit Jajodia next. Another mover and shaker, Jajodia, has worked up quite a poker resume for himself. He is a former DPT champion and won two titles at the Manila Megastack in May this year. He most recently finished runner-up at the BPT ₹20K PLO and was gunning to go one better this time before a brutal bad beat ended his dream run prematurely. Abhijeet Shetty eliminated Jajodia in fifth place after the former moved all-in for his remaining seven big blinds from the small blind and saw big blind Shetty make the call. The battle of the blinds saw Jajodia’s in the lead against Shetty’s but unfortunately for him, the runout gave Shetty a full house.

Several hands later, Shetty eliminated Akshay Jain in fourth place after dominating the latter`s with that spiked two-pair on the board .

The eliminations kept coming by swiftly, and Anis, who had already claimed four victims on the final table, set his sights on Vidur Singhal next. Singhal moved all-in on the button with , and Anis made the call from the small blind tabling . The board ran eliminating Singhal in third place.

Vidur Singhal
Vidur Singhal

Less than a week after winning the BPT ₹20K Kickoff, Bengaluru-based Abhijeet Shetty was once again in the firing line to take down his second live title. Shetty was in decent shape at the start of the heads-up play holding a stack of 2.67 Million against Anis’ 3.21 Million.

The heads-up between Abhijeet Shetty & Asif Anis
The heads-up between Abhijeet Shetty & Asif Anis

The finale lasted over 40 minutes before Anis took it down in a preflop all-in showdown where his were trailing Shetty’s . Anis hit three-of-a-kind kings on the board getting him his first-ever live title!

Asif Anis takes down 35K SuperStack
Asif Anis takes down 35K SuperStack

Final Table Results (INR)

  1. Asif Anis – ₹14,70,440
  2. Abhijeet Shetty – ₹9,63,380
  3. Vidur Singhal – ₹5,67,570
  4. Akshay Jain – ₹3,45,460
  5. Ankit Jajodia – ₹2,66,540
  6. Raghav Bansal – ₹2,21,000
  7. Vaibhav Sharma – ₹1,91,415
  8. Debashis Bal – ₹1,68,720
  9. Harshit Chopra – ₹1,47,040

 

Content & Images Courtesy: Online Poker News, India

Keep following PokerGuru for all the updates from WPT India!

Online Rankings

i Top Ranked Poker Players in India
Member Won
Member Won
Member Won
₹1,29,29,197
₹1,25,88,313
₹1,20,69,627
₹1,15,22,676
5.Vinay B Vinay B
₹1,14,52,995
6.M L M L
₹1,14,40,871
₹1,09,13,473
₹1,05,24,690
₹99,60,672
₹99,49,327
Member Profit
Member Profit
Member Profit
₹55,77,649
₹50,59,154
₹47,48,174
₹46,54,932
₹44,93,503
₹43,84,994
₹43,56,316
₹42,00,183
₹41,14,429
₹40,97,624
Member Points
Member Points
Member Points
42,268
35,945
28,827
4.N K N K
28,311
25,814
25,649
24,477
24,446
9.M L M L
23,604
22,922

Top Online Poker Rooms

Top
PokerGuru