Baazi Poker Tour: Sriharsha Doddapaneni Leads Final 13 to Day 2 of the ₹10K Kick Off

It was a firecracker start for the Baazi Poker Tour (BPT) 2020 edition which saw the series opener ₹10K Kick Off register a massive 286 entries. The tournament easily decimated its own advertised guarantee, posting a prize pool of over ₹26 Lakhs!

Though the event had a slightly slow start with only 66 entries being clocked in by Level 2, the action quickly picked up the pace and by the time the late registrations were closed at the end of Level 8, the event had comfortably surpassed its predecessor that had logged in 257 entries last year in October!

The top 32 places were assured a minimum payout of ₹23,700 with ₹6.18 Lakhs reserved for the champion. The money bubble burst during level 17 and it was none other than our PokerGuru Ambassador Nadeem Basha who had to bear the unfortunate tag of becoming the bubble boy.

The play ended after 20 levels and it was Sriharsha Doddapaneni (cover image) who emerged with the biggest stack of 830,000. One of India’s finest poker pros, Doddapaneni had clinched his career-first WPT title in the ₹25K Big Bounty last October for ₹6.63 Lakhs. He has certainly kicked off 2020 in style by bagging the overnight chip lead among 13 contenders moving forward to Day 2 of the Kick Off event which is to reconvene at 2 PM on January 9.

Though Dodappaneni is undoubtedly a favorite to take down the title, there are other runners who can give him a run for his money. PokerBaazi stalwarts Chirag Sodha (396,000) and Navkiran Singh (185,000) have both managed to bag commendable stacks for Day 2. In fact, Sodha was down to less than 11 big blinds at one point, but he made a tremendous comeback to accrue the third largest stack of the night.

Other notable names in the Day 2 list include Nishant Sharma (335,000), Anuj Yadav (264,000), Phanindra Akkina (261,000) and PokerGuru Ambassador Ashish Ahuja (208,000).

Among the other noteworthy names who finished ITM were Rajat Sharma (14th for ₹35,500), Shivam Jain (16th for ₹30,400), Vikram Kumar (19th for ₹26,000), PokerGuru Ambassador Ashutosh Balodhi (22nd for ₹26,000), Aditya Sushant (24th for ₹26,000) and Raghavendra Hada (26th for ₹26,000).

PokerBaazi also made a historic announcement during the Day 1 of the Kick Off event. A short Bollywood-like trailer revealed that the site that is known for making unprecedented moves is launching ‘the biggest poker tournament in Indian history’ – End Boss! The winner will bank a never-before-seen ₹1 Crore top prize! Players can win a free ticket to the tournament by simply guessing the guarantee of the End Boss.

Check out the trailer right here.

On the heels of such a fantastic announcement, it seems like the series is all set to take the domestic poker circuit by storm!