My Winning Strategy in the IOPC Main Event, Adi as a Mentor & More

Posted by Ashish Munot on 2019-01-25 at 6:50 AM

In the last few months, I have been doing quite well on the online felts. Coming into the India Online Poker Championship (IOPC) Main Event, I had only one objective in mind – Play Aggressively. My plan was certainly in contrast to how the majority population of participants in Main Event play, which is a more conservative and reserved approach. I thought I’d go into the tournament all guns blazing and I am glad I did since it definitely worked in my favour.

I believe that players can always learn something from every game, event, tournament that they play in. Winning feels great, but even if you don’t there is still a lot you can learn. Playing in this Main Event, I also learned a few things. Most importantly, I realized that truly “when the chips are down” that is when you figure out what you are made of.

When around 50 to 55 people were left in contention in the IOPC Main Event, I opened from under-the-gun with pocket kings and my opponent 3-bet for 6 big blinds from middle position. I re-raised it to 13.5 big blinds. My opponent and I were both 42 big blinds deep. The flop opened . I bet to about 22 percent of the pot. My rival min-raised and I called. The turn came . While I checked, my opponent jammed for less than 35 percent of the pot. At that time, I felt like it was priced in and that I had to call, which I did. He turned over aces and I lost a big pot there.

However, I did not lose hope. Gradually the field narrowed down considerably, and 40 to 50 players had been eliminated. In the meantime, I too had started to re-build my stack. By the time there were only 18 people left, I had consolidated to a very good stack and was chip leading the event. From then on it was mostly about navigating through the remaining levels, picking my spots and putting pressure wherever I could.

And that was it. After 11 hours of grinding, at around a little after 4 in the morning I was able to successfully take down the event.

Like I said winning feels great, but I could not have come as far as I have without the coaching and guidance that I have received from Adi [Aditya Agarwal]. His mentoring has helped many of us in PokerGuru Staking improve drastically. It has changed the way we look at and approach the game.

Under his tutelage we have realized just how much studying and working on one’s game is important. We are blessed that he is giving us his valuable time to help us out. It’s has undoubtedly changed things for the better.

Aside from Adi’s coaching, I too have put in a lot of work in the past few months in my game which in turn has improved my gameplay to a huge extent. I feel that I have an edge in many aspects of the game and definitely lack a bit in a few areas and in the coming months plan to work dedicatedly on the areas where I’m lacking a bit.