Top 5 Developments of 2021: Despite Some Headwinds Online Poker Boom Continues

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  • Attreyee Khasnabis January 9, 2022
  • 6 Minutes Read

This is it, folks! The final segment of our year-end editorial feature, ‘Top 5 Developments of 2021.’ And topping the list for the third year in a row is the online poker boom in the country!

Online poker has been on the rise in India for several years now, but the COVID-19 induced pandemic has catalyzed the industry in the last two years. Establishments and businesses shut down with the lockdown coming into place in March 2020, resulting in new players flocking to online poker sites in significant numbers with nothing to do. Recreational players took a shot at becoming pros, while newbies took a reinvigorated interest in the mind sport. If you read some of our ‘Young Gun’ and ‘Rising Star’ features, you will know how several players have talked about the lockdown allowing them the opportunity to take the plunge and become full-time poker players.

Poker companies, too, saw this for the opportunity that it was. Soon enough, the online sites were flooded with higher-than-usual guaranteed MTTs. Several new and massive guaranteed MTT series were announced during the lockdown months. Many cash game promotions and leaderboards also made the rounds to encash on the uptick in online poker traffic.

Towards the end of 2020, things started to calm down, both in terms of the pandemic and online action. The latter was possibly a combination of exhaustion from playing excessive online poker and depletion of funds. Around this time, live poker too witnessed a nominal resurgence. The Goa government permitted the casinos to reopen at 50% capacity. While this did not impact the decline in online traffic tremendously, it was another reason, albeit minor.

As the New Year rolled over, it seemed like we were heading towards normalization. At the start of 2021, there was an overflow of big guarantee tournaments in the first three months, starting with the IOPC January edition to the APT India Online Series. Soon after that, the second wave hit. More terrible than the first, and with the country not as well prepared, things went haywire initially. Countrywide lockdowns were back, and it brought yet another online poker boom with it.

We saw all of the marquee series return this year, and a few new ones took off as well. The most notable among the new MTT launches was PokerBaazi’s National Poker Series in June.

Interestingly, some of the year’s biggest scores were bagged by relatively lesser-known players. Case in point, Ishaan Chugh, who took down PokerBaazi’s 5 Crores GTD EndBoss 2021 for 71.48 Lakhs, and Vaibhav Temani, who championed Spartan Poker’s IOPC The Crown July Edition for 58.02 Lakhs.

Here is why the online poker boom headlines the key poker developments of 2021.

 

Massive Guarantees & Big Scores

For a third consecutive year, online poker continued to be the driving force for the domestic poker industry, and the online sites catered to the player’s expectations adequately.

PokerBaazi’s 5 Crores GTD EndBoss was undoubtedly the biggest guaranteed online tournament held in the country last year. The brand brought back the popular tourney in October. While the event wasn’t a replay of 2020 that saw Abhishek Maheshwari trounce a field of 5,847 entries to win a 1 Crore payday, it still resulted in the single-largest score on the domestic felts. New Delhi’s Ishaan Chugh triumphed over a 4,816 entry-field to become the EndBoss 2021 champion. The 31-year-old struck a three-way deal with Divanshu Khurana (2nd for 63.37 Lakhs) and Dhiraj Lakhotia (3rd for 57.30 Lakhs) en-route to banking a whopping 71.48 Lakhs.

Ishaan Chugh
Ishaan Chugh

 

Spartan Poker hosted two successful editions of the India Online Poker Championship (IOPC) in January and July. The January edition culminated with PokerGuru Ambassador Laksh Pal Singh claiming the IOPC Crown for a ginormous 51.81 Lakhs payday. The July edition saw Singh’s mentor and the ‘original Poker Guru’ Aditya Agarwal contend for the IOPC Crown. Though Agarwal had dominated much of the final table action, the title was ultimately won by Vaibhav Temani for a jaw-dropping 58.02 Lakhs.

Vaibhav Teman
Vaibhav Temani

 

One of the most thrilling performances of the year came from Mohammad Azhar. The BBA graduate from Jaipur National University won a whopping 72.35 Lakhs at the first-ever National Poker Series (NPS). Azhar’s mind-boggling run in the NPS saw him champion the NPS Kick-Off, the NPS#79 Friday Force, and finally, the NPS Main Event, making for one of the most captivating performances of the year. Not just that, he also won the NPS ‘Night of Champions’ SnG!

Mohammad Azhar
Mohammad Azhar

 

Cash Games Promotions Flood the Virtual Felts

While online MTTs dominated the discussion, online poker brands did not forget cash game players. There was stiff competition among the top four online poker sites to dole out the most lucrative cash game promotions.

The online poker operators hosted several cash game leaderboard-centric promotions throughout the year, such as PokerBaazi’s Cash Smash and PokerStars India’s Daily Cash Game Leaderboards. Many season-themed promotions like BlitzPoker’s Diwali Cash Bomb Leaderboard and Spartan Poker’s Merry Cashmas were also a raging hit.

 

Lockdown Provides Players the Opportunity to Take the Poker Plunge

Recreational players deciding to turn pro is not a new thing in poker, but the number of players who took the plunge to play the game full-time was remarkably high in 2021.

In a recent interview, Young Gun Siddhanth Kripalani explained how he decided to take up poker professionally during the lockdown. “I started playing professionally full-time last year, during the lockdown. That’s when I actually learned what it takes to play poker.”

Siddhanth Kripalani
Siddhanth Kripalani

 

Spartan Poker Team Pro Nikita Luther also addressed the impact of the pandemic on online poker in an interview. “We are in an unprecedented situation, and in the first few months of the pandemic, the increase in traffic was nearly 300%. Friends I have been talking to from different professions and backgrounds were all just sitting at home with nothing to do except play poker. So, in that sense, a lot of recreational players got connected with the game and found a huge passion and enthusiasm for it. That was a big highlight because I could direct them to the right sources to become better poker players. Direct them to the high-value tournaments that Spartan Poker was holding and crushing the guarantees.”

Nikita Luther
Nikita Luther

 

Young Gun Anuj Yadav was arguably one of the standout winners last year and became the first player to win the prestigious The Millionaire title thrice. He, too, shared how the pandemic has helped him better concentrate on his gameplay. “I experienced my biggest growth as a player and a person. I realized that time is precious, and in order to achieve our biggest ambitions, we should make the best use of our time. I also worked with a psychologist to work on some negative memories from my school days that were holding me back. That made me a much more confident person. Besides that, I watched a lot of content videos, worked on solvers/ICMIZER/HRC, battled top regs in international HSMTTs, and crushed.”

Anuj Yadav
Anuj Yadav

 

WSOP Online Returns For Second Edition

2021 is most notable for the return of poker’s biggest festival, World Series of Poker (WSOP) that made a comeback in Las Vegas after a 26-month-long hiatus. The online version of the series also returned for a second edition. In 2020, the first-ever WSOP Online had been rolled out on WSOP.com and GGPoker/Natural8 to compensate for the lack of a live series.

Last year, with the annual live series making a comeback, there was doubt surrounding the return of the online series. Laying all doubts to rest, WSOP announced in April that WSOP Online would be returning for its second edition from July 1 to August 1.

WSOP Online’s return did eventually lead to the number of online bracelet events held during the live WSOP annual series to be brought down. Nevertheless, the second edition of the WSOP Online was once again a phenomenal success.

 

As the second wave passed us by and the vaccination drive began in full force, online poker traffic got back to the pre-COVID lockdown levels. Overlays were back as a lot of the poker liquidity got drained out in rake and TDS due to an overkill of promotions. Just like at the beginning of 2021, towards the end, an influx of flagship MTTs from the IOPC July edition to PokerBaazi’s 7th Anniversary Bash, WPT India Online, and EndBoss led to ‘poker exhaustion.’

Luckily, after a short lull, the online poker action has always managed to bounce back. In all, 2021 saw online poker continue to grow despite roadblocks like gaming bans in states like Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Now, all we can hope for is an even better 2022 for the poker industry!

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