Last Saturday saw the Poker Sports League (PSL) franchises picking up the poker players to complete their respective teams for the inaugural season of the League. Hosted at the Playboy Club, Delhi, the first auction of poker players in PSL saw all 12 franchises selecting India’s finest poker players. The franchises followed the Snake Draft process, which allowed the team owners to take turns in picking the players of their own choice. All team owners were seen very sensibly picking the players to ensure they had competitive squads going into the competition ahead.
Most of the team owners are well-known members of the Indian business community and of course poker enthusiasts themselves. The 9 members for every team have been divided into 4 sets of 2 players each – Pro Players, Live Qualifiers, Online Qualifiers, Wild Card Entries and the team captain and that makes it a total of 108 players who will be competing in the inaugural PSL league for a whopping INR 3.36 crores in prize money.
Below is the round-up of the poker players who have finally made it to the first-ever PSL Draft:
1.Bengaluru Jokers
Owner: Kunal Shah, Co-Founder of FreeCharge
Region: South
Mentor: Raghav Bansal
PRO: Jaideep Sajwan
PRO: Zarvan Tumboli
Live: Chirag Sodha
Live: Sandeep Nasa
Online: Praveen Kumar Anguru
Online: Varun Gupta
Wild Card: Donger Kim
Wild Card: Calvin Lee
2.Chennai Bulls
Owners: Girish Mathrubootham, Co-Founder of FreshDesk, Mithun Sacheti, Co-Founder of Caratlane
Region: South
Mentor: Aditya Sushant
PRO: Vidwath Shetty
PRO: Manoj Pentakota
Live: Sujith Sachidanand
Live: Rajesh
Online: Kartik Anand AG
Online: Rohit Bahel
Wild Card: Jagdeep Singh
Wild Card: Nitin Jain
3.Delhi Panthers
Owners: Rishi Kajaria of Kajaria Ceramics, Ruchirans Jaipuria of Jaipuria Group, Abhishek Jain of Leela Jewels, Gaurav Goel of Dhampur Sugar
Region: North
Mentor: Akash Malik
PRO: Aman Dhamija
PRO: Vinod Megalmani
Live: Samay Modi
Live: Akshay Nasa
Online: Kunal Bhatia
Online: Prashant Bhutoria
Wild Card: Dhruv Patel
Wild Card: Erik Rise
4.Gujarat Acers
Owners: Harish Bahl, Manish Vij, Gopikaa Davar of Smile Group, Mukesh Agarwal of VITWO
Region: West
Mentor: Sumit Asrani
PRO: Abhinav Iyer
PRO: Bhavesh NaiNani
Live: Anish Juwarkar
Live: Ramesh Roa Thotapalli
Online: Mayank Jain
Online: Manesh Rathod
Wild Card: Henrik Toleffsen
Wild Card: Raman Gujral
5.Haryana Hunters
Owners: Amrish Rau, Jitendra Gupta, Co-Founders of Citrus Payment
Region: North
Mentor: Samay Parikh
PRO: Paawan Bansal
PRO: Alok Ranjan
Live: Arjanveer Singh Chadha
Live: Rahul Marwaha
Online: Rishab Malik
Online: Arjun Khurana
Wild Card: Samuel Vousden
Wild Card: Tomi Brouk
6.Kings Hyderabad
Owners: Amit Shah, Karan Bhagat, Yatin Shah of IIFL-Wealth
Region: South
Mentor: Kunal Patni
PRO: Madan Kumar
PRO: Sangeeth Mohan
Live: Himanshu Arora
Live: Chiraag Patel
Online: Aarfeen Himany
Online: Nilesh Kumar
Wild Card: Sam Razavi
Wild Card: Shilpa Bhagat
7.Kolkata Royals
Owners: Ankkit Bhadur of Playboy North, Taarun V Jain of Legend Group
Region: East
Mentor: Romit Advani
PRO: Sahil Agarwal
PRO: Mayank Agarwal
Live: Rohan Singh
Live: Naman Khettry
Online: Ram Kakkar
Online: Kunal Sharma
Wild Card: JW Prodigy
Wild Card: Harshvardhan Kapoor
8.Mumbai Anchors
Owner: Mehul Shah, Original Promoter of Anchor Electrical
Region: West
Mentor: Amit Jain
PRO: Nishant Sharma
PRO: Kartik Ved
Live: Mahipalsinh Vala
Live: Gaurav Gupta
Online: Salil Nagmote
Online: Honey Bijlani
Wild Card: Danish Shaikh
Wild Card: Abhishek Rathod
Team Manager: Anup Palod
9.Pune Sharks
Owners: Rishabh Jhunjhunwala of Bhilwara Group, Shamit Khemka of Synapse India, Chetan Kajaria of Kajaria Ceramics, Sachin Goel
Region: West
Mentor: Shashank Jain
PRO: Deepak Bothra
PRO: Sharad Rao
Live: Myron Pereira
Live: Rachit Saran
Online: Dhawal Lachhwani
Online: Mandira Gupta
10.Punjab Bluffers
Owners: Aditya Munjal of Hero Cycles Group, Arjun Jain of White Fox, Shiva Vig of Anika International
Region: North
Mentor: Abhishek Goindi
PRO: Sumit Sapra
PRO: Ratul Steves
Live: Gaurav Sood
Live: Aryan Chaudhary
Online: Vineet Kumar
Online: Yuvraj Chaudhary
Wild Card: Akira Ohyama
Wild Card: Vedant Thadani
11.Rajasthan Tilters
Owner: Purrshottam Bhaggeria of Filatex Group
Region: North
Mentor: Shravan Chhabria
PRO: Sahil Chutani
PRO: Siddarth Singhvi
Live: Sanjay Taneja
Live: Ashish Garg
Online: Aditya Arora
Online: Abhishek Tibrewala
Wild Card: Patrick Leonard
Wild Card: Muskan Sethi
12.Goan Nuts
Owner: Gaurav Mohan of Eventwala
Region: West
Mentor: Dhaval Mudgal
PRO: Vivek Rughani
PRO: Tarun Goyal
Live: Avinash Tauro
Live: Siddarth Karya
Online: Raman Jauhar
Online: Pranay Chawla
Wild Cards: Thomas Ward
Wild Cards: Bryan Huang
All players from the above teams will land in Goa for the Main Event of this first-ever PSL to battle it out for the prestigious honors from 24-28 May at India’s largest floating casino- Deltin Royale Goa. The PSL is a brand new chapter in India’s poker industry for the growth and sportification of poker and we hope that this will provide the much-needed boost to the ever-growing poker market in India.