IPA & Stars Poker Room Join Hands For New Partnership

IPA
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  • PG News October 18, 2015
  • 2 Minutes Read

Alliances seem to be the new business mantra and now reports from Bengaluru speak of another partnership, this time between Indian Poker Association (IPA) and Stars Poker Room, seeking to further the cause of poker in the city.

Headed by KN Suresh, the IPA has been the pioneering poker room in Bengalauru, paving the way for the mushrooming of several other rooms. KN Suresh had been single-handedly responsible for getting poker legally recognized by the State, with his landmark case in Oct 2013. Suresh also managed to repeat the victory in Kolkata, where he is now busy with another poker venture, along with partner, Aditya ‘Bitti’ Agarwal.

Rajeev Raut is the known face behind the Stars Poker Room, which he initiated with businessman G Krishnaji late last year. Raut is another established name in the poker community and has been operating the business side of the game, first at the Deltin Royale Poker Room (Goa) and then at Rockets Poker Room in Bengaluru.

Raut told PokerGuru that, “I was fortunate to be at right place at the right time to form this alliance, which I feel is a collaboration with the one of the most respected names in Indian Poker. It will be great to join KN Suresh in any further expansions that he plans anywhere in the country”.

“I always wanted to be associated with Suresh – affectionately known as “Machu” to all of us. This alliance is also an acknowledgment of the abilities & the vision we share to take Indian poker to the next level,” he added.

PokerGuru Young Gun Abhishek Goindi, one of the first Indians to make a mark on the Asian tournament circuit has been the catalyst in bringing together the two entities and has also been consulting them on the new venture. Speaking about the alliance, he told Gutshotmagazine.com that, “The idea behind this tie-up is that Stars will looks after the day-to-day activities and management of the co-branded room and leave Suresh free to pursue the legal side of things leading to opening up more markets and therefore players for the poker ecosystem.”

Goindi said that the new venture – IPS-Stars poker would be launched on Oct 23 and will target the niche Bengaluru market initially. He further added, “We have entities like the India Poker Championship operating in Goa which is the topline tournament for poker players across the country and we want to establish IPA-Stars as base for local players and a stepping stone to events like the IPC, Asian tournaments like MPC, APPT, APT and even beyond.”

Raut added that currently the tie-up was only for the currently operational Ulsoor property but they hoped to increase this to 4 or 5 more rooms across the city soon. His new venture – Stars Poker Room is expected to come up in Indranagar before Diwali this year and is set to have 12 tables and regular tournaments with range of buy-ins from ₹3000-5000.

People want to play poker and we need to provide with a safe and comfortable experience. It can get dodgy here with a couple of rooms recently who opened up and not even properly licensed to do so. That creates a bit of a fear factor then when such places attract negative attention of the authorities. This is especially bad for those new players who get turned off when they hear about things like this,” Raut explained.

Goindi echoes the sentiments and elaborates, “The idea is to provide a safe platform for people to come enjoy the game, cater to the smaller stakes players and in due course grow the numbers in Bangalore to a point where it becomes an attractive option to visit for even outstation players. Having been a full time player myself for a long time, I understand what a player is looking for so the idea is to give as much back to the players as possible. So we will do small weekly events and tournaments, provide training to locals who are keen on learning and/or improving their game. There is also a plan to host a tournament series to find and nurture homegrown talent so I am pretty excited about that. We intend to institute good loyalty programs and rakeback plans to help put back into the poker economy rather than many others who have sucked the life out of it.”

Either way one looks at it, poker is on the boom in India, with both, operators and players getting the best of the new growth-situation.

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