Born and brought up in Hong Kong, Sahil Mahboobani is a 26-year-old poker player who moved to Gurgaon just around 1.5 years ago. He has been playing poker for around 12 years now, full time for the last 2 years. For the first year, his main grind was PLO cash online, mid to high stakes. Later, he shifted his focus to online MTTs and hasn’t looked back yet. The player has been enjoying it all in poker winning and cashing big across several prestigious tourneys on adda52.com and other sites.
On 4th July this week, he took part in Adda52’s super-value tourney PayCheck, which featured INR 20 Lac GTD prize pool at just INR 2200 buy-in. The event drew a total of 893 entries with several pros, regulars, and the past champions. After several hours of a long grind, it was the emerging player Sahil Mahboobani aka ‘ImHighIshove’, who came out on top after beating the recreational player ‘supernuts13’ in heads-up. Mahboobani pocketed an impressive INR 4,90,000, while ‘supernuts13’ settled for INR 2,68,000. The top 92 players were paid out in this event with a min-cash of INR 4,000.
We caught up with Sahil Mahboobani via an online chat to talk about his win, poker journey, future plans in live and online poker and a lot more. Here are the excerpts of the conversation:
OPN – How does it feel to defeat a massive field in Adda52’s PayCheck?
Mahboobani – It feels pretty good to win the PayCheck tournament. I had been running and playing pretty bad before this, so it was a relief for me and it helped me to gain my confidence back.
OPN – What are your views or thoughts on PayCheck tourney?
Mahboobani – I really liked the idea of a smaller buy-in event with a large field and prize pool, that too on a weekday. The value was great, so a super-value tourney!
OPN – How tough was the field? How was your overall experience?
Mahboobani –The field was pretty soft as it had many recreational players. I liked the tourney structure, so overall a good experience.
OPN – Any special moment/ hand from this tournament?
Mahboobani – I wouldn’t say there were any special hands, many of the hands played out itself and I ran pretty well. As for the special moment, the only special moment in a tournament I feel is the winning moment
OPN – Who do you think was your strongest competitors at the final table?
Mahboobani – To be frank, I did not know many players on the PayCheck final table. I think, there were no regulars and so I was pretty lucky.
OPN – Finally, what are your plans in live and online poker?
Mahboobani – As for future goals this year, I plan to grind and focus online as of now, because I find it more comfortable. As for live poker, I have a few events on my mind, such as DPT July, APPT Manila, and of course WPT India, if all goes according to the plan.