Daily Majors: Aniket Waghmare Champions IOPC #73 Millionaire Legends For ₹36.36 Lakhs!

Mondays are usually the slowest day of the week in online poker, but for the second week running, yesterday turned out to be different. With the entire poker community railing the ₹1.75 Crores GTD IOPC #73 Millionaire Legends FT, it was the underdog Aniket Waghmare who defied the odds to storm his way into the “Millionaire`s Club.” The victory fetched him a career-best ₹36.36 Lakhs payday along with a seat in the IOPC Masters Table! PokerGuru Ambassador Ashish Munot finished runner-up for ₹22.15 Lakhs, with two-time Millionaire champion Vishal Tulsyan missing out on a record third title in third-place. Young Gun Ujjwal Narwal, PokerGuru Ambassador Kartik Ved, and Nagendra Vadlamani banked the other FT scores.

While two IOPC Millionaire tourneys have already played out, the action has quickly moved on to the ₹3.5 Crores GTD IOPC The Crown that closed out its first starting flight last night.

Sanat Mehrotra, Sagar Choudhury, Karan Lochab, M. Keerthi Kumar, and Aditya Kulkarni were others who bagged title victories on Monday. Here`s a quick recap of the action!

Spartan Poker

The second of the six live-streamed FT`s at the IOPC series, the ₹1.75 Crore GTD IOPC #73 Millionaire Legends FT, grabbed all the eyeballs last night. The six finalists from a starting field of 770 entries took their seats at 6 PM, and it took under an hour`s play to find a winner! It all came down to a climatic heads-up showdown between Aniket ‘Ntwadumela’ Waghmare and PokerGuru Ambassador Ashish ‘Donkey07’ Munot. Both players were chasing their first IOPC title at the series, and it was the chip leading Waghmare who eventually prevailed. The final hand of the event saw Waghmare`s pitted against Munot’s . The former paired both his hole cards on the rundown to win a ginormous ₹36.36 Lakhs!

Waghmare’s run to the finish line was nothing short of brilliant. He was fourth in chips at the start of the FT but worked his way up diligently. In his post-win conversation, Waghmare said, “All these FT rivals were more experienced than me, I was very worried about Kartik (Ved) in particular…” In fact, at one point at the start of the FT, Waghmare had admitted to the IOPC production team that he would probably be the first player to bust since everyone else had a better poker resume than him.

The runner-up Munot also pocketed a career-best ₹22.15 Lakhs last night, crossing the ₹5 Crore-mark in lifetime earnings. He currently sits on ₹5.19 Crores in recorded online earnings.

Vishal ‘Tokio999’ Tulsyan (3^rd for ₹15.70 Lakhs), Young Gun Ujjwal ‘Paperboi’ Narwal (4^th for ₹11.85 Lakhs), PokerGuru Ambassador Kartik ‘TheInternetKid’ Ved (5^th for ₹9.39 Lakhs) and Nagendra ‘SorosDruckTudor’ Vadlamani (6^th for ₹7.10 Lakhs) banked the FT scores.

Want to watch the cards-up FT replay? Check out the stream below with Randy Lew, Richard Haridasoham, and Peter Abraham calling the action!

With two IOPC Millionaire editions out of the way and less than a week left for the series to end, the action has swiftly moved on to the series’ headline event, the ₹3.5 Crores GTD The Crown. The first of eight starting flights of the ₹11,000 entry buy-in tourney played out last night. Day 1A registered 450 entries. Play lasted all of four hours and 39 minutes. By the end of it, 83 hopefuls bagged a stack for Day 2. ‘borntrouble’ (anonymity requested) (242,949) emerged as the end-of-Day 1A chip leader with Raghav ‘thatssosick’ Bansal (234,680) and ‘mannu2424’ (212,380) carrying forward the next top stacks. There is a starting flight lined up at 6 PM daily this week with all the advancing stacks to converge for Day 2 on January 31.

Moving over to the Monday primetime attraction, the ₹22 Lakhs GTD ReCharge logged in 1,061 entries, overlaying ₹78,000. Sanat ‘avneed’ Mehrotra juggernaut his way past the competition, including his heads-up rival Raghavendra ‘nslookup’ Singh (runner-up for ₹2.54 Lakhs) to win his fourth IOPC title at the series and ₹4.16 Lakhs in prize money.

Mehrotra has been in phenomenal form recently. He hit the headlines last week after winning an incredible three IOPC titles on January 20. Yesterday, Mehrotra also finished eighth in IOPC #80 Destiny IOPC Edition for ₹25,200, pushing his recorded winnings over ₹4.65 Crores.

The ₹10 Lakhs GTD IOPC #80 Destiny IOPC Edition had another run starting at 11 PM. This time the ₹2,200 entry buy-in event gathered 425 entries, falling ₹1.50 Lakhs short of its listed guarantee. The Crown Day 1A chip leader, ‘borntrouble,’ was the last player standing in the tourney and won ₹1.74 Lakhs after a heads-up chop with ‘ASG9611’ (runner-up for ₹1.59 Lakhs).

Siddharth ‘SidSparta21’ Ojha (IOPC#76 ₹5.5 Lakhs GTD for ₹1.21 Lakhs), Nitin ‘Demogorgon’ Arora (IOPC #79 ₹6.75 Lakhs GTD for ₹1.72 Lakhs), Anirban ‘pokernoob’ D Das (IOPC #77 Monster Stack ₹5 Lakhs GTD for ₹1.02 Lakhs) and PokerGuru Ambassador Arjanveer ‘bazzingaa’ Singh Chadha (IOPC#75 ₹3 Lakhs GTD for ₹55,414) championed the other IOPC titles on Monday.

PokerStars India

With the Winter Series now in the rear-view mirror, it was back to the regular Monday schedule for PokerStars India. The featured tourney of the day, the ₹3 Lakhs GTD Battle Royale (6-Max), gathered 194 entrants collecting ₹3.08 Lakhs in the prize pool. Play continued for nearly six hours before the anonymous users ‘thakur0007’ and ‘boga577’ chopped the top prize with each player collecting ₹53,400. ‘thakur0007’ was declared the champion!

The day`s other event awarding TLB points towards PokerStars India’s ‘Star of the Month’ January leaderboard race, the ₹75K GTD Bigstack Turbo, was championed by Sandeep ‘effuno007’ Varma for ₹16,780. The mystery user ‘pokergod576’ finished runner-up for ₹12,692, while Armaan ‘armaan007111’ Kochhar came in third for ₹9,599.

For complete details on the ‘Star of the Month’ promotion and the latest leaderboard standings, visit the promotions page.

Adda52

Adda52`s ₹8 Lakhs GTD Iron Man registered 348 entries to post an overlay of ₹1.67 Lakhs. IOPC Highroller third-place finisher Sagar ‘alwaysnutz’ Choudhury was the last player standing in the tourney and won ₹2 Lakhs. ‘robinx90210’ finished runner-up for ₹1.21 Lakhs.

With this win, Sagar Choudhury has crossed ₹40 Lakhs in earnings for the month. He has already lapped up five tourney titles, six FT finishes in January, and ranks #4 on the monthly leaderboard. His lifetime tally stands tall at ₹4.41 Crores.

The other flagship on the site, the ₹2.5 Lakhs GTD Voyager, attracted 330 entrants to create a guarantee-surpassing ₹2.76 Lakhs prize pool. The tourney started at 9.30 PM and went on till 3:15 AM. Karan ‘karan880’ Lochab shipped the tourney, besting Kapil ‘pokerkingsachin’ Chaudhary (runner-up for ₹42,090) in the heads-up to win ₹70,656. This happens to be Lochab’s second-best recorded finish on Adda52.

PokerBaazi

The Monday headliner on PokerBaazi, the ₹20 Lakhs GTD APT#48 Monday Major, logged in 489 challengers, overlaying ₹44,000. M Keerthi ‘pokerkid08’ Kumar championed the tourney, winning a first-place cash prize worth ₹3.88 Lakhs after eliminating the user ‘Arpit’ (runner-up for ₹2.72 Lakhs) in heads-up play.

The APT#49 Monsterstack champion Aditya ‘adit11’ Kulkarni took down the ₹5 Lakhs GTD APT#49 MonsterStack to win his second APT Online title in less than a week and ₹1.25 Lakhs in prize money. The former PPL PLO Highroller champion navigated his way across a 208 entry-field. He defeated IOPC#75 ₹3 Lakhs GTD champion, PokerGuru Ambassador Arjanveer ‘holdbaby’ Singh Chadha (runner-up for ₹88,036) in heads-up play. With this score, Kulkarni has breached the ₹1.46 Crore-mark in recorded online winnings!

The ₹5 Lakhs GTD APT#47 Turbo gathered 360 entrants who signed-up for ₹1,650, and the top 45 places got paid. Championing the tourney was the former The Millionaire Lite winner, Chirag ‘miyagi’ Sodha, who raked in ₹1.13 Lakhs. Nikhil ‘blastupinside’ Arora finished runner-up for ₹79,380.

The other notable Monday winners are:

Note: Since today is a national holiday, we will not be putting up a detailed version of our Daily Majors report for January 25.