Yesterday saw India’s premier live poker tournament series – India Poker Championship (IPC) make a comeback to Goa after a gap of almost 4 years. Running at the Big Daddy Casino, the series got off to a strong start with its opening event – IPC 10K Freezeout drawing a record 437 entries to quickly surpass its advertised INR 25 Lac guarantee and collect approximately INR 43.70 Lac in prizepool!
The 10K Freezeout was meant to be a single-day event but the final table of the event extended to the next day due to the massive turnout. The final hand of Day 1 play came during level 23 and it saw Milesh Jain exiting in 10th place for INR 74,300. He was busted by the well-known poker pro Kavish Kukreja who took his stack to 1.06 million after the hand to emerge as the chip lead among the final 9 survivors who returned for the final day today to battle it out for the title and INR 8.80 Lac in top prize! Kukreja got off to a tremendous start by busting out Shane Hodges and Kanishka Samant in the first hand of the final day. However, he could not maintain his lead and lost it a after a few hands. Eventually, he was railed by Siddharth Mundada who later emerged victorious.
Mundada has been doing pretty well in live poker over the past few months. He had registered 5 cashes at WSOP 2019 with his best cash coming from the Monster Stack where he finished 76th for $10,626 . This win worth INR 8,80,000 was his best live cash and it took his live earnings to over $36k.
During the 3-handed play, Mundada battled it out with Manas Kalita who pitted his Kd 10h against As 4h of Mundada. The board ran Kc 2s 2d As 10s, giving both players two pairs but Mundada’s higher pair of Aces won him the coveted pot and Kalita was eliminated in 3rd place for INR 3,96,700.
After Kalita exiting in 3rd place, it came to heads-up between Nikhil R and Mundada who had nearly 5:1 chip advantage over his final opponent. The dual did not last long and was over within just 15 minutes with the 27-year old Mundada winning the tournament for an impressive INR 8,80,000.
Final Table Payouts (INR):
- Siddharth Mundada – INR 8,80,700
- Nikhil R – INR 6,17,000
- Manas Kalita – INR 3,96,700
- Rahul Tulsija – INR 2,64,900
- Kavish Kukreja – INR 2,03,800
- Aashvin Prasad – INR 1,68,900
- Pradeep Sharma – INR 1,41,800
- Kanishka Samant – INR 1,14,900
- Shane Oswald – INR 88,100
- Milesh Jain – INR 74,300