The first edition of the 2020 Baazi Poker Tour (BPT) is turning out to be a super successful festival with its second event – the 15K Big Bounty also crushing its guarantee. Starting at 4pm yesterday, the two-day event of the 7-day long series registered an impressive 193 entries, collecting INR 17.56 Lac in prizepool, the lion’s share of which went to Kshitij Kucheria who eventually defeated Deepanshi Tomar in heads-up to win his first live title for INR 4.70 Lac. Tomar settled for INR 3.22 Lac and it was also the fist live score for Tomar as well, who was the only female on the final table.
Top 24 places were paid out in this event and Myron Pereira, who was busted by Chirag Sodha in 25th place, became the bubble boy. Jyoti Ranjan Nayak (24th for INR 19,500) was the first player to finish ITM. Some other notables who made money were Ritesh Khatwani (21st for INR 20,200), Adda52 Team Pro Kunal Patni (12th for INR 30,400),and Gokul Krishna (11th for INR 30,400).
The final table of the 15 Lac GTD event began today at 2pm with Gangadhar Raaj (535,000) in the lead. The eventual champion Kucheria had started the FT as the 5th largest stack among the final 9 players. However, he steadily built his stack and eventually went on to win his career-first live title.
The first elimination came in Bobbe Suri who was busted by Gangadhar Raj in 9th place. Both players hit a straight but Raj holding Q10 against K7 of Suri got a better straight on a 8-9-J-10-7 board. The well-known pro Abhishek Rathod exited in 8th after his AK lost to pocket nines of J Raju.
Going out in 7th place was Nishant Sharma who open shoved with pocket sevens and was called by the only lady at the FT – Deepanshi Tomar – who held pocket queens and won the pot with a set. Following Sharma in the 6th place was Anmol Srivats whose Q8 lost to Chirag Sodha’s Q9.
The next to hit the rail was none other than the start-of-FT chip leader Gangadhar Raaj, a series regular who had also final tabled this event last year as well. He had become short-stacked and finally decided to shove with A10 and was called by Chirag Sodha with pocket tens, which held up.
Up next, it was J Raju who was eliminated in 4th place by the eventual champion Kshitij Kucheria who called a shove from Raju having Ks 9s against KQ off-suit of Kucheria who flopped a queen pair to take down the pot and bust his opponent in the 4th place. Kucheria’s next victim was none other than Chirag Sodha who had finished 5th in the 10K Kickoff event of the ongoing series. Sodha had shoved his 9d 5d against K2 off-suit of Kucheria who went on to hit a one card king-high flush to eliminate Sodha in the 3rd place to finally enter the heads-up battle with Deepanshi Tomar.
Heads-Up For The Title!
The heads-up began with Kucheria holding 19,80,000 chips against 8,85,000 of Tomar who got off to a good start and was even able to claim the chip lead. However, Kucheria came back strongly and regained his lead to eventually take down the title. The final hand of the tournament saw Kucheria moving all-in with pocket fours and Tomar reshoved holding Ad 5c with her remaining 8 BB stack. The board Ks 9h 9s Qd Jc bricked for Tomar and Kucheria won his first live title for INR 4.70 Lac. It was by far 4th live score for Kucheria who had finished 8th in a WPT Cambodia event in November 2019.
Final Table Payouts (INR):