Online Rankings: Nishaanth S Rules the Week; Vaibhav Temani Dominates November, Tarun Goyal Still Ahead in POY Race

In this feature, we bring you to the top three weekly, monthly, and yearly performers every Sunday. These rankings are based on cumulative winnings (cashes). However, the rankings only include players registered to our online ranking system, so hurry up and register if you haven’t signed up on PokerGuru yet!

Can you believe the year Indian poker is having? Records are being smashed faster than we can keep track of, players are winning sums of money that change lives, and the action at the tables is relentless. We’re seeing tournaments with prize pools that would have blown our minds just a few years ago, and the competition is absolutely insane. PokerBaazi and Natural8 India have been at the forefront, hosting some of the biggest and most incredible tournaments. 2024 is going down in the poker history books, that’s for sure!

With just five weeks left in the year, the Player of the Year (POY) race is surprisingly still open! Natural8 India’s tournaments are keeping things super interesting, and a single big win could turn the whole leaderboard upside down. Plus, we’ve got the APT Online 2024, going strong until December 1, and PokerBaazi’s huge ₹35 Crores GTD WPT India Online Series kicking off next month. It will be a gripping finish to the year; honestly, anything could happen!

Tarun Goyal: Setting a New Standard

This year’s POY race is basically a high-stakes poker game in itself. Leading the charge is Tarun Goyal, a former IT guy who’s become a poker legend. With a record-breaking ₹7.28 Crores in winnings and ₹5.51 Crores in profit, he’s setting a new benchmark that will be tough to beat. Goyal is the first player ever to win over ₹7 Crores in a single year, and he’s done it in style on Natural8 India. He’s had four incredible eight-figure scores on the platform, including winning a coveted WSOP bracelet!

Goyal has been unstoppable these last few months. He dominated the winnings and profits leaderboards in August and September, came in a strong third in October, and is still a major contender in November. After a quiet start to the month, he stormed back to take the #2 spot last week. He may have lost some ground this week with just one ₹1.92 Lakhs score on Natural8 India, but his overall performance has been stellar. He’s currently in fifth place for the month with ₹26.68 Lakhs in winnings (monthly profits – ₹20.05 Lakhs), thanks largely to his seventh-place finish in the Sunday HR Main Event 1500, where he scooped up a massive ₹19.63 Lakhs.

Neel Joshi: The Young Gun Chasing the Leader

But don’t think for a second that Tarun Goyal has already got this in the bag. Neel Joshi, the Young Gun hot on his heels at #2, is more than capable of pulling off a comeback and turning things upside down.

Joshi, a PokerStars India Ambassador, was the undisputed king of the online tables in the first half of the year. His stats are jaw-dropping: ₹5.93 Crores in winnings and ₹3.76 Crores in profit. Like Goyal, a big chunk of Joshi’s success – ₹5.08 Crores, to be exact – has come on Natural8 India, where he’s racked up an incredible 15 seven-figure scores. He might be trailing Goyal by ₹1.35 Crores right now (partly because he’s taken some well-deserved breaks), but you can never underestimate Joshi, especially after the year he’s had!

Nishaanth Shanmughasundaram: The Dark Horse Making Waves

Nishaanth Shanmughasundaram has come out of nowhere, shooting up from #7 to #3 in the POY race. The crazy part is that we didn’t even know how well he was doing until this week when he finally opted into our tracking system. Turns out, he’s been quietly crushing it on multiple platforms, playing consistently and at an incredibly high level. No wonder he’s suddenly become a serious contender!

His dedication has paid off big time, with a whopping ₹5.10 Crores in winnings and ₹4.11 Crores in profit. That makes him the third player to break the ₹5 Crore mark this year! And he’s not just grinding it out; he knows how to win big! Remember when he took down the Beijing Mystery Bounty Millions in July for ₹1.97 Crores? That was insane! And just this month, he’s added wins in Adda52’s Big Whale and PokerBaazi’s BSS SuperStack to his fast-growing list of achievements.

But his biggest November highlight has to be his incredible win in Natural8 India’s Korea National Cup last night. He topped a strong 1,165-entry field to win ₹33.44 Lakhs and his first-ever APT Online Lion Trophy!

This win launched him to the top of the weekly leaderboard with ₹45.18 Lakhs in earnings (weekly profits – ₹41.67 Lakhs) and to #2 in the November rankings with ₹62.67 Lakhs in winnings (monthly profits – ₹53.91 Lakhs). Nishaanth is playing some amazing poker, and it’s exciting to see how high he can climb.

Anant Purohit: The Silent Assassin

Then there’s Anant Purohit, the silent storm nobody saw coming, and now he’s sitting comfortably at #4 in the POY rankings. With over ₹4.50 Crores in winnings and ₹3.27 Crores in profit, this poker veteran is having the best year of his career. His performance on Natural8 India has been incredible, with nine podium finishes and eight seven-figure scores in the past three months. While others are chasing the spotlight, Purohit is quietly building his fortune.

This past week, he added another ₹6 Lakhs to his winnings—a footnote compared to his tall achievements in previous weeks, but still a solid performance. This puts him down to #3 on the November leaderboard (thanks to Nishaanth’s incredible run), with a staggering ₹60.50 Lakhs in winnings (monthly profits – ₹47.65 Lakhs).

Sanjay Chaudhary: The G.O.A.T. Story

Sanjay Chaudhary might be slipping down the POY leaderboard, but he’s still holding strong at #5 with ₹4.28 Crores in winnings and an unbelievable ₹4.09 Crores in profit. And it’s all thanks to one incredible tournament: PokerBaazi’s G.O.A.T. 2024, the biggest online tournament ever held in India!

Chaudhary finished second in that epic event, striking a heads-up deal with Kabir Chhatwal (who ended up winning) and walking away with a life-changing ₹4.14 Crores! It’s a perfect example of how one big score can completely change your life in Indian poker and a reminder that anyone can make it big, no matter where they start.

The Rest of the POY Top 10: A Who’s Who of Indian Poker

The rest of the POY leaderboard is a roll call of the biggest names in Indian poker, with superstars like PokerGuru Staking coach Advait Rajguru (#6 with ₹4.25 Crores in winnings), WSOP bracelet winner Young Gun Aayush Arya (#7 with ₹4.17 Crores), Satyam Verma (#8 with ₹3.75 Crores), G.O.A.T. 2024 champion Kabir Chhatwal (#9 with ₹3.50 Crores), and Neeraj Sattawat (#10 with ₹3.36 Crores) all in the top ten.

And with amazing players like Sashank Chakravarthy, Rajneesh Thakur, JaiKiran Kumar, Mohak Kapoor (the annual TLB (points) leaderboard topper), Rising Star Aman Parakh, Sagar Raj, Vinay B, three-time POY Young Gun Gaurav Sood, Young Gun Ashwin Vijay, and Manish Lakhotia, also in the running, the final weeks of this race are going to be an absolute battle.

Vaibhav Temani: Dominating the Monthly Leaderboard

While all eyes are on the Player of the Year race, Vaibhav Temani is quietly destroying the monthly leaderboards. This poker pro from Jaipur has been on an absolute tear for three weeks straight, and he’s leading the November leaderboard by a mile.

Temani’s numbers are insane: ₹71.61 Lakhs in winnings and ₹59.85 Lakhs in profit for the month. Even though he had a relatively quiet week by his standards, his overall performance this month has been incredible. He’s been especially dominant on Natural8 India, where he took down the Sunday Bounty Forty Stack 44 for a massive ₹23.44 Lakhs, finished second in the Bounty Hunters Daily Main 54 for another ₹16.45 Lakhs, and won the Wednesday Wonderbox 150 for a site-best ₹23.94 Lakhs. Temani isn’t just playing the game; he’s showing everyone how it’s done.

Other notable players on the November leaderboard include Sumit Sapra (#4 with ₹34.85 Lakhs in monthly winnings), POY frontrunner Tarun Goyal (#6 with ₹26.69 Lakhs in monthly winnings), and Akash Malik (#7 with ₹19.89 Lakhs in monthly winnings).

Advait Rajguru: The PokerGuru Coach With the Midas Touch

PokerGuru Staking coach Advait Rajguru, currently #6 in the POY race, has been a top performer all year. And this past week, he proved it once again by climbing to fifth place on the monthly leaderboard and second on the weekly charts.

In November alone, he’s racked up over ₹30.67 Lakhs in earnings (monthly profits – ₹26.07 Lakhs), including an impressive ₹13.90 Lakhs (weekly profits – ₹12.51 Lakhs) this past week. He had an unbelievable run with four wins and two podium finishes in just one week! He conquered the Adda52 Millions on Sunday, took down Spartan Poker’s Wednesday Warrior, and then won PokerBaazi’s The Summit for the second time in a row. It seems like he’s winning everywhere he plays!

Rajguru’s having a phenomenal year, and it’s no surprise he’s now a coach at PokerGuru Staking. He’s not just an online beast, either. He led the Deccan Aces to victory in Pocket52 PSL Season 6 and made a big splash in Season 1 of PokerBaazi’s ‘The Circuit.‘

Sagar Raj: Climbing the Ranks

Sagar Raj, who’s currently #16 in the POY race, had a fantastic week, finishing third on the weekly leaderboard. He won ₹11.19 Lakhs and added ₹8.39 Lakhs to his profit total. He started the week with a bang by winning Adda52’s Big Whale on Sunday for ₹8.85 Lakhs and then made the podium in PokerBaazi’s The Endeavour Lite on Tuesday for another ₹1.23 Lakhs.

Weekly Leaderboard: A Tight Race

On the weekly front, Young Gun Ashwin Vijayvergiya (#4 with ₹9.45 Lakhs in weekly winnings), Armaan Kochhar (#5 with ₹8.51 Lakhs in weekly winnings), and the 2024 TLB (points) #2 Rajneesh Thakur (#6 with ₹8.31 Lakhs in weekly winnings) rounded out the top six spots. Other big scorers included Navin Paul (₹7.57 Lakhs), Sumit Sapra (₹7.42 Lakhs), Kovid Saraswat (₹6.72 Lakhs), Puneet Sachan (₹6.23 Lakhs).

Weekly Online Rankings (November 17 – November 23)

Monthly Online Rankings (November 1 – November 23)

Yearly Online Rankings (January 1 – November 23)

For a complete list of online rankings, check out our ‘Leaderboards’ page. If your name is not on our list, register and enter your screen names into your account to get ranked!