This Week in Poker: August 25 – 31

In the PokerGuru feature ‘This Week in Poker,’ we bring you the weekly roundup of the most significant online scores by Indian MTT players and the top stories from both the live and online poker circuit. Here are this week’s top stories!

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August closed out in style with the second edition of the World Poker Tour (WPT) Online India handing out the last of its titles. There are no brownie points for guessing that the week’s biggest winner was the ₹3 Crore GTD WPT India Main Event champion Kushal Sogani! The relatively lesser-known player trounced over 227 participants in the Main Event finale to lock in a career-defining ₹47.45 Lakhs payday. Not just that, he also bagged a Hublot watch and a WPT Passport worth $5,000. Sogani managed an FT finish in the WPT 3000 as well, boosting his Sunday winnings to ₹48.82 Lakhs! For his inspiring run, Kushal Sogani is our “PokerGuru Star of the Week!”

Young Gun Anuj Yadav won a career-second The Millionaire title for ₹17.24 Lakhs, becoming the eighth player in our database to win the Spartan Poker flagship twice.

Mohammad Azhar, Ram Kakkar, Puneet Mishra, Ankita Ajay Malik, and Vaibhav Sharma were the other notables who added seven figures this week.

With the WPTOI now in the books, poker players get about two weeks of downtime before Spartan Poker returns with the third edition of the Final Table Series (FTS) from September 10 to 19.

Running alongside the FTS 3.0 will be PokerBaazi’s Indian Micro Poker Series (IMPS) Gold Edition from September 12 to 26.

Poker players can also look forward to the return of India’s biggest online event, the ₹5 Crore GTD EndBoss. Timed around PokerBaazi’s seventh anniversary, the mega tournament will run from October 20 to 24, with the eventual champion slated to take home a life-altering ₹1 Crore top prize!

Moving over to the live felts, the 2021 Super High Roller Bowl (SHRB) Europe is on its last legs. The series has already crowned eight champions, with Antanas Guoga, a.k.a. Tony G claiming two SHRB titles in less than a week! The $250,000 No-Limit Hold’em Main Event is already underway and is expected to play down to a winner soon.

The GGPoker/Natural8-leg of the 2021 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Online gave out five more bracelets this week, with Alexandros Theologis emerging as the biggest winner at the series (so far) after winning Event #21: $5 Million GTD Super High Roller Championship for $1.21 Million.

Online Railbird Report

The final Sunday of the World Poker Tour (WPT) Online India unleashed firecrackers on the virtual felts, with the ₹3 Crore GTD WPT India Main Event Finale playing down to a winner. Kushal Sogani cruised past a star-studded 227-strong Day 2 field to ship the tourney and won his career-first WPT trophy, a mind-blowing ₹47.45 Lakhs payday, a Hublot watch, and a WPT Passport worth $5,000. He also placed fourth in WPT 3000 to collectively earn ₹48.82 Lakhs. Sogani’s spectacular Sunday run makes him the week’s biggest scorer and our “PokerGuru Star of the Week!”

His top finishes include:

> 1st in the WPT India Main Event Finale ₹3 Crore GTD for ₹47.45 Lakhs

> 4th in the WPT 3000 for ₹1.37 Lakhs

Sogani denied the NPS Main Event champion Mohammad Azhar the WPT Main Event title. Nevertheless, Azhar picked up a hefty ₹34.09 Lakhs for his runner-up finish. With ₹34.58 Lakhs in weekly earnings, Azhar was the second-biggest winner this past week.

Young Gun Anuj Yadav has been unstoppable since his comeback at the IOPC July Edition. On Sunday, the 25-year-old delivered another brilliant performance as he won Spartan Poker`s The Millionaire – his second time winning this tourney – for ₹17.24 Lakhs. On Thursday, Yadav posted two runner-up finishes in The Big Deal and the Highroller, respectively, and championed The Elite on Friday. He added a whopping ₹31.78 Lakhs over these runs alone.

His top finishes include:

> 1st in The Millionaire ₹1 Crore GTD for ₹16.83 Lakhs (Cumulatively ₹17.24 Lakhs)

> 1st in The Elite ₹30 Lakhs GTD for ₹6.64 Lakhs

> 2nd in The Big Deal ₹30 Lakhs GTD for ₹5.95 Lakhs

> 2nd in the Highroller ₹12 Lakhs GTD for ₹1.95 Lakhs

Ram Kakkar was one of the regs who made it to the WPT India Main Event final table, where he impressively finished third for ₹24.51 Lakhs.

The WPT India Main Event fourth-place finisher Puneet Mishra also banked a cool ₹17.62 Lakhs.

This Sunday, Ankita Ajay Malik claimed her career-fourth WPT Online title after taking down the ₹1 Crore GTD WPT Unreal for a career-best ₹15 Lakhs. Malik final-tabled five more events, banking ₹16.38 Lakhs cumulatively this past week.

This week, Vaibhav Sharma won three titles, starting with The Summit, the WPT Gladiator, and the Bounty Builder, collectively adding ₹15.80 Lakhs to his tally.

His top finishes include:

>1st in The Summit ₹15 Lakhs GTD for ₹4.32 Lakh

> 1st in the WPT Gladiator for ₹7.65 Lakhs

> 1st in the Bounty Builder ₹10 Lakhs GTD for ₹2.46 Lakhs

Young Gun Kanchan Sharma, Sahil Chutani, Abhimanyu Mittal, former Millionaire champion, Rajat Sharma, Young Gun Shardul Parthasarathi, PokerGuru Ambassador Ankit Wadhawan, Sachin Sharma, PokerGuru Ambassador Vishal Bajaj, Young Gun Gaurav Sood, Kunal Patni, Simran Sharma, Apratim Sharma, and Gagandeep Singh were the other top scorers of the week.

With the WPT Online India closing out, the virtual felts have simmered down to weekly usuals. The series ran three leaderboards. Raghav Siddalinga topped the WPT Mega Leaderboard to collect ₹8 Lakhs. Niteen Raj (WPT Mini Leaderboard for ₹2.55 Lakhs) and Satbir Singh (WPT Micro Leaderboard for ₹1.50 Lakhs) won the other two WPTOI leaderboard races.

Notable Winners of the Week

PokerBaazi Announces ₹5 Crore GTD EndBoss 2021 (October 20 – 24)

PokerBaazi is coming back with the second edition of India’s biggest online event, The EndBoss. Once again, the tournament features a ₹5 Crore guarantee at the buy-in of ₹11,000.

There are five starting flights to The EndBoss 2021, and the tournament assures ₹1 Crore in prize to the champion! Step satellites starting as little as ₹1 are already underway on PokerBaazi.

Read the complete report here

Super High Roller Bowl (SHRB) Europe 2021 – Updates

The Super High Roller Bowl (SHRB) Europe has completed seven of its scheduled nine events. The most recent player to win an SHRB Europe event was the Lithuanian businessman Antanas Guoga a.k.a. Tony G, who championed Event #7: $100K Short Deck for a career-best $1,169,000. This victory was his second title win at the ongoing series and comes less than a week after he took down Event #3: $25K Short Deck for $382,500.

Read the complete report here

The other title winners at the series include Russia’s Artur Martirosian (Won Event #6: $100K NLHE for $1.40 Million), Spain’s Santi Jiang (Won Event #5: $50K Short Deck for $756K), Turkey’s Selahaddin Bedir (Won Event #4: $50K NLHE for $832K), French poker pro Johan Guilbert (Won Event #2: $25K NLHE for $506K), and 10-time WSOP bracelet winner Phil Ivey (Won Event #1: $25K Short Deck for $408K).

WSOP Online 2021

The international leg of the 2021 WSOP Online Series on GGPoker & Natural8 has already run through 22 WSOP bracelet events.

The biggest winner at the series was announced this week. Greek poker pro Alexandros Theologis defeated two-time bracelet winner Kahle Burns heads-up in Event #21: $5 Million GTD Super High Roller Championship to win his first WSOP bracelet and a career-best $1.21 Million.

Read the complete report here

The other bracelet winners include Malta’s Armando D’avanzo (Won Event #22: $400 Colossus NLHE for $409K), Brazil’s Eduardo Rodrigues (Won Event #20: $1,500 Monster Stack NLHE Freezeout for $213K), Russia’s Radmir “KOPOBA” Sadirov (Won Event #18: $5,000 Short Deck Championship for $169K), and Ukrainian pro Andrii Derzhypilskyi (Won Event #19: $840 6-Handed Bounty for $154K).

With this, we conclude this week’s roundup of the latest news updates and developments from the world of poker. We will return again next week with our weekly report. Stay tuned.