Heads-Up With the First-Ever Spartan Poker Millionaire United Champion – Mahima Walia Das

Heads-Up With Mahima Walia Das
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  • Attreyee Khasnabis March 31, 2020
  • 6 Minutes Read

In the past, we have done several interviews with Millionaire winners, but today’s feature is a special one. Spartan Poker’s flagship Millionaire tourney has become the most prestigious online tournament in the country, and it finally crowned its first female poker champion last Sunday. The Bengaluru-based Mahima Walia Das (cover image) came out on top of the inaugural edition of the Millionaire United ₹1 Crore GTD, winning a career-best ₹21.93 Lakhs in the process!

The 32-year-old recreational player’s poker journey is an exciting read. She picked up the game while pursuing her MBA at IMT Ghaziabad. It was the mathematical aspects of the game that piqued Das’ interest in poker, not surprising for someone who happens to be an Olympiad topper. However, she credits much of her expertise and knowledge to her husband, the well-known pro Anirban “pokernoob” Das, who is also her poker coach!

In fact, Das sportingly revealed that all the hand history analysis sessions she endured between her husband and his batchmate and friend, another seasoned pro and one of the most recognizable names in the circuit today, Anant Purohit, actually helped her develop a better understanding of the game.

For someone who only plays “one or two Sundays a month,” Das did exceptionally well to claim the first-ever Millionaire United title last Sunday. Not only that, but she is also the very first woman to claim a Millionaire title-ever! WSOP bracelet winner Nikita Luther had joined the ‘Millionaire’s circle’ after finishing fourth in the IOPC #58 The Millionaire Legends ₹2 Crores GTD earlier this year; however, Das is the first female player to win this flagship tournament!*

Unlike many Millionaire champions we have spoken to, Das has no immediate aspirations to become a full-time poker professional. What stands out in her poker journey so far is the month-long trip that she took with her husband to Las Vegas to play the WSOP in 2018. That trip went a long way in introducing her to many top pros in the circuit. She has also participated in all seasons of the Match IPL as a part of the team Jaipur Jewels!

We had an exciting conversation with Das about her Millionaire victory, her introduction to the sport, how she is dealing with the current lockdown, among other things. Here are the excerpts.

 

Hi Mahima, thank you for speaking to me! Let’s get the most obvious question out of the way first – how does it feel to win the first-ever Millionaire United on Spartan Poker?

The feeling still hasn’t quite sunk in yet. I was quite excited to make Day 2 and then really started getting nervous, with about 40 players left. The final 2 hours are still quite a blur, and the happiness only started an hour or so after the game 🙂

I don’t play regularly only one or two Sundays a month, so it was quite surprising to have such a big win out of the blue!

 

Before we dive deep, tell us a little about yourself.

I am 32, my hometown is Ambala. I currently live in Bangalore with my husband, Anirban Das.

I spent my schooling days in Ambala. It’s our 7th or 8th generation there.My father owns a hotel there. I have my mom, my dad, my brother, who also got married to my best friend. My grandmother lives with us, my grandfather passed away a couple of years back, he has been my biggest strength and inspiration, and we also have an adorable pug called Noddy. The hotel has been operational for a little over 30 years now, so I guess that’s where my roots will remain. My in-laws live in Mumbai.

I did my engineering from Jaypee University, which is very close to Shimla. Post that, I got my first job in Bangalore, way back in 2009, where I was a software engineer with Accenture. Then I did my MBA from IMT Ghaziabad, went on as an exchange student to Dubai. So spent a couple of years in Ghaziabad and Dubai and then started to work with start-ups based out of Noida, Gurgaon, and the NCR region. I met my husband, who also happens to be my poker coach during the time that I was working in the NCR region.

I’ve pretty much been a start-up person for the last eight years or so, and I really like the impact one can make working at a start-up compared to larger companies. Currently, I work for a start-up company called TapChief, in Bangalore, which is also rated as the best start-up to work for in the country by Linkedin. I have a crucial role to play there, and I take care of the entire demand side.

Mahima Walia Das

 

Tell us about your poker journey so far. When and how did it start and your progression in the game over time? When did you start playing poker seriously?

I’m a recreational player and only play one or two times a month. I also played the Match IPL league with Jaipur Jewels and have been with them for all seasons so far. Having said that, in the last couple of weeks, I have started to play again on Sundays.

Since the start of 2020, it’s more of a recreational activity rather than a proper full-time profession. We did go to (Las) Vegas in 2018 for the World Series of Poker which was really exciting as me and my husband combined that with a 1-month US vacation.

I used to play at my campus at IMT Ghaziabad as we used to have a lot of tournaments. Then, I would typically be the only female playing with a lot of my batchmates at the campus, and I was not that great. I knew the basics, but I would not do a lot of calculations or do a lot of analysis post a game.

I got married to Anirban (Das) in December 2014, and he had an inclination towards poker. Post-work, he would come back home and start to play poker, and at first, it would lead to fights. But eventually, I developed an interest in the game as well.

My husband has a friend named Anant Purohit, who goes by the name ‘Pro.’ They were batchmates from MBA, and these guys would do a lot of hand history analysis together wherein they would review each other’s hands. I would be a silent observant, and that is when I started to get a better hang of the game. I’ve always been good at maths, I did top an Olympiad in the country, so that’s another thing that got me hooked because the game is very mathematical in nature. A lot of these situations, spots become pretty obvious once you’ve run them N number of times.

I was playing some small games and some of the recreational games on Sundays. Like once a month, I would end up playing, but I wasn’t really winning, and I think that’s also true for tournaments because one big tournament you ship, you basically balance out what you’ve spent so far. So, I was definitely not a regularly winning player because I was not even putting that kind of volume.

The real improvement happened when my husband and I took a sabbatical from work, and we started to play poker professionally for 6 months to bring out a monthly leaderboard contest on Spartan that had a WSOP package up for grabs. My husband won 5/5 monthly leaderboards that led to the WSOP trip in Vegas. I only played a couple of small games at WSOP and did not play the Main Event as it was way beyond my league. Having said that, it was a fun activity altogether. I did not win anything in tournaments per se over there.

The cash games were also pretty exciting because, in Vegas, we saw drunk people playing like crazy. I also play OFC small stakes cash games, which I enjoy even more than MTTs.

Mahima Das Walia

 

Tell us about your Millionaire United journey. Can you share some standout hands from the tournament or elaborate on the tight spots that you were in?

I played the second flight. I did not play the first one as I actually had some office work, and I was occupied. The second flight, I decided that I’m going to take 2 buy-ins and probably restrict myself, but I ended up taking the third one despite my better judgment, which I guess was a good decision, as it got me the victory!

I did not land up to Day 2 with a huge stack. I carried about 45,000 in chips, which were about 15-16 big blinds. Folded every hand during the short bubble because of how long I had spent on Day 1 but eventually doubled up AQ>A10 to get to about 25 BBs and a playable stack with about 80 players left.

Then there was another flip when there were around 60 people left, I had Ace-King and doubled up again against nines, and my stack just kept increasing from there.

When there were the last two or three tables left, I do remember a bad beat that I gave and which got me to 1M+ stack and top 5 stacks with less than 15 players left. I think it was a standard spot where I re-jammed 12 BB with A5s to a button open. The button had AK, but I somehow got lucky on the A5995 runout.

Post that, it was pretty smooth and quite an easy game. One hand that I definitely remember is against “ChampionPlayer” where I had eights, and he had Queen Nine. The flop was 10 7 and 8. Then comes a six, and then comes another 10 so very standard play again, it was a full house over a straight. Not sure how anybody would have played that differently.

When it was around three-handed, I won with ace-king, and “crazyeights” had king queen. I got a massive chip lead, and the heads-up lasted only 3-4 hands since the other person was very short stacked.

There was one hand in between where ‘Lazylad’ called on the river with an ace-high anticipating that it was a bluff, that was another big pot which secured my position on the final table.

 

It was a tough final table with a lot of experienced players. Any standout hands or adjustments you had to make along the way?

Yes, I was getting a lot of 3-bets by a couple of players. Multiple times, I opened a hand or would complete by blinds, I was getting 3-bet very frequently there, which is when I decided to play slightly tighter and started to concentrate on the value hands and let go of the mediocre hands all together in between.

I’m still sort of a very conservative player. So, I wouldn’t do a lot of experiments. The standard spots, of course, I would not let go of. I also ended up hitting a lot of flops in this scenario.

Most of the final table, I was in the chip lead, so I also used a lot of spots to exploit and took advantage of the ICM pressure on the other players. Small stacks, of course, did not have much to lose there, they would play aggressive and the slightly bigger stacks, I had to take care of.

 

We know that your husband, Anirban, is also a seasoned poker pro with numerous online titles under his belt. How is your equation with your husband when it comes to poker? Do you discuss strategies and study together?

Of course, he is the one from whom I’ve learnt most of the game. There are days in a month wherein we do analyze our hand history. Having said that, the frequency of that was much higher previously when we were doing this full time. Now the frequency is lesser, but we do end up doing that.

I am still comfortable only playing 2-3 tables at a time. He does 7-8 tables, so I also watch him play.

Anirban Das & Mahima Walia Das
Anirban Das & Mahima Walia Das

 

What is your grind routine like? Please respond to two scenarios – 1. In the current lockdown period and 2. regular period. How are you dealing with the lockdown, both poker and non-poker wise?

Genuinely, there’s not much that has changed for me. So far, I have only been grinding on Sundays, but with the win now, I am both positive and look like I’ll start to play some of the weekday majors as well.

Frankly, it’s a start-up I work for, and it’s always very aggressive. I always have a lot of work, and I also have a team to manage, so a lot of time goes into that. With the lockdown period, of course, things have changed. Before, I would only come back from the office around 9-10 pm. So, after that, you wouldn’t have a lot of energy or bandwidth left to actually take up poker. So, this definitely saves my travel time, and I can think of putting more time into the game.

It’s alright so far. We started on a little sooner than when it was officially declared in the country. All the start-ups in Bangalore had started remote work or work from home starting March 10 onwards. So, we’ve been home since then. Work keeps us busy. The day typically goes into office work and evenings, we either play some poker or end up watching something.

 

You had previously won the Destiny on Spartan in 2017. Tell us about your other notable scores from these past 2 and a half years.

Those were smaller games in nature. I would have reached the final table of the SuperStack a couple of times, but it was way back, so I may not remember these events.

 

How has the Coronavirus pandemic affected your life? Has this in any way given you more time for poker?

Non-poker wise, of course, work has taken a toll. Not just for me, but all the companies are in a struggling phase because of this. The market has gone down, so that’s something that’s worrisome because we still have ownership of a lot of people in the team to take care of so slightly scared on those aspects. Still, I have a very strong feeling that we’re all gonna come out of this stronger, and probably we will develop some sort of new skills and learning that all of us would have wanted to do at a certain point in time, but just never got the opportunity.

Also, I am getting to spend more time with my husband because of the lockdown. Otherwise, we would hardly see each other. So yes, so far, I like it. I hope it doesn’t get to a stage where you are onto each other fighting all the time. Luckily, we’re not there yet.

 

Who are the poker players, both domestic and international, that you look up to?

So, there’s this guy called Rishab Jain, he also plays for Jaipur Jewels. I’m quite a fan of him. I used to watch his games when he would play cash games, and I’m also friends with him.

Another poker couple I am friends with is Anant Purohit and Ruchi, who are friends outside poker as well.

Aditya and Shuchi Agarwal, probably the most famous poker couple of India, were also great hosts during our Vegas trip and really enjoyed hanging out with them.

My immediate interaction with these poker players has been on two major platforms. One is the Match IPL, where I do meet all these guys and have become friends with quite a few of these pros, and then, of course, when we went for the World Series of Poker, there were a lot of Indian poker players. So, I, of course, enjoy railing all the folks that I know, it’s fun. It’s a community thing that’s bound to grow together.

Mahima Walia Das

 

What about your future plans?

I don’t want to leave my job and enter a full-time poker stint. I have a knack for learning new things, poker, of course, has a lot more learning curve and basis to grow at, but I get that kick more from the professional environment where the challenge every day is new in nature.

I do plan to donate some of this money for the Coronavirus relief, and I have a plan of doing something of my own eventually at some point in time, so this would probably go in for that. I love to travel. Unfortunately, I cannot do that at this point in time. Yes, we’ll do that soon.

*Note: The assertion has been made that Mahima Walia Das is the first known female poker player to win a Millionaire title. However, there have been times when the real names of Millionaire winners have not been revealed on their request.

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