Poker is a game of individuals but teaming up for a common goal definitely brings out the best in you. Two accomplished Indian poker players – Abhishek Rathod and Arsh Grover have announced a 1 year long challenge at the online felt to reach a milestone $100,000 in online poker tournament profits. The $100,000 Challenge will see two MTT grinders playing low and mid stakes MTTs ($55 or below) on a number on poker sites including 888 Poker, PokerStars, Full Tilt, Titan, Winamax, Party Poker. Abhishek plays under the screen name of “abhi147” and Arsh’s alias is “BigggTymeR” on PokerStars and 888 Poker and “QuadKillerr” on Full Tilt.
2 Friends, $100,000 Profits, 1 Year
The Challenge which started on Jul 31 will be running for one year. Meanwhile, both Abhishek and Arsh will be blogging about the updates and progress of the challenge weekly on OPN. We spoke to both the grinders about the scope and prospects of the ARAG challenge. Here are the experts of the chat:
Q1. How did the idea of the 100K Challenge come about? Which websites/stakes will you play on? What will be the hours?
Abhishek – We started the challenge to give us something to be motivated towards a long term goal. We are both very competitive and thought that having a long term target to achieve would be very motivating for us to put in the volume and work hard on our game. Apart from this achieving this challenge would be such a good inspiration for Indian players who want to take poker more seriously.
Arsh – The main purpose of the challenge is to motivate us to work harder and play better. Also I think this will inspire more young players in India to take up poker professionally when they see something like this is achievable in online MTT’s playing Low-Mid Stakes.
Q2. Will this be an equal partnership playing role or on a different ratio?
Abhishek – Well, this is an equal partnership. We would be working together reviewing hand histories and sharing thoughts on hands etc. But we are both backed and coached by different people. My backer is €urop€an and Arsh is backed by BBZ staking.
Arsh – This will be an equal partnership playing role. We both are backed and coached by different stables. I’m in BBZStaking and Abhishek is backed and coached by €urop€an. Though, we will be talking strategy, discussing HHs and working together to help improve each other.
Q3. Why did you choose to blog about your challenge? How do you think this will help you and the poker community at large?
Abhishek – I used to have a blog on a poker site a while ago when I used to play SNGs recreationally. I think it helped me a lot to put in volume, work and study especially knowing that a lot of people are following your blog. It was also inspiring for people who were following when they could see my results, discuss hand histories. There were even times when I would be asking for help in certain hands in blog and it was always nice to get opinions from pros and casual players.
Arsh – Well when I blogged about my first challenge, 100$ to 5,000$ back in Dec. 2014 on twoplustwo, it got a lot of good feedback (currently 12k+ views) and it inspired me even more to work harder, improve every day. I think blogging also makes you more disciplined in achieving your goals as you can see and measure your progress, growth from Day 1
Q4. What are your expectations from your partner in this challenge?
Abhishek – One of the reasons I paired up with Arsh for this challenge is the way he has been working on his game and the amount of volume he has been putting in since the past 6-7 months. I think he is a very motivated and hardworking player. Even though this challenge seems hard to achieve I am confident if we both put in the effort and volume we can achieve this in one year.
Arsh – We both will be going HARD on the online felts, putting in a lot of volume, also putting in a lot of hours off the felts in studying (be it getting coached, watching videos, analysing HHs) and Just giving our 100% in crushing this challenge.
Q5. The challenge states playing only online MTT’s of $55 or below. How will you ensure discipline? Will offline tourneys not allowed? Will high stakes online tourneys allowed?
Abhishek – We will be playing some higher buy-in tournaments and some live poker as well. But the scores from those tournaments won’t be counted towards the challenge. We want the challenge to be a low/mid stakes challenge where we need to perform consistently instead of having a one big score in a higher buy-in tourney.
I moved to Sweden to play full time poker. I made that decision only after I knew I could be disciplined and hardworking and put in the long hours needed to play poker every day. I believe Arsh is also quite disciplined and hard working. I have been following his blog and speaking to him for a while and he is definitely someone with a lot of potential.
Arsh – I’ll be playing on 888, Stars, FTP and maybe Titan. Abhishek I assume will be grinding on 888, Stars, Ftp, Party, Stars.fr, Titan and Winamax. About the ensuring discipline part, Abhishek and I both will be playing above 55$ MTT’s online and we will be playing live as well but that will not count towards the challenge. Only Online MTT’s up to 55$ Buy-in are counted.
OPN India wishes good luck to both the players for their new endeavor.