2015 promises to be a great year for the Indian poker scene, with the emergence of several new players and the return of a more active calendar, vis a vis poker tournaments in the country.

PokerGuru captured a number of potential talents of 2014 in our Young Gun series. There are many more emerging stars and we hope to present them too, shortly. PokerGuru has been spot on in recognizing budding talent throughout and today, our earlier Young Guns are all doing great, with some highly significant scores at both, live and online tournaments.

Today, we do a quick round up of all the Young Guns we covered in 2014, as faces to watch out for in 2015…

26-year-old Faridabad native, Raahil Bhatia graced our Young Gun series early on in March 2014. Raahil displays an amazing passion for poker, a madness which drove him to WSOP as a fresher and the sheer hard work he put in to study the game with handwritten notes in an excel file called ‘PokerPad.’

Raahil first break came when he played the EPT London package satellite and won a $13,000 package to London to actually play at the tournament. After that trip, Raahil got down to play serious poker, both online and live. Raahil is a great believer in charity and says that the more he gives, the more he wins.

His two most significant finishes this year are 2^nd places at PokerStars ‘The Bigger $109, $200K GTD’ for $36,989 on Nov 23 and in WCOOP Event 12 for $29,386 on Oct 10, besides several other large scores all through the year.

This marketing engineer suggests, “Don’t run after numbers. Work on improving the systems and the numbers shall automatically follow. Similar to running a business, this is the ideal approach to poker.”

Read his poker story here.

Even as we recount Karan’s journey, he has just made 1^st place for $10,473 at PokerStars ‘The Hot $16.50 [Turbo], $50K GTD’, on Jan 2, starting the year with a bang.

Karan Radia was the next Young Gun we featured in May last year. Karan started young in poker and his interests are diverse ranging from cosmology, meditation, football and poker. Shuttling between US and UK, Karan has made an impact on both, live and online tournaments in 2014.

Karan started 2014 with three final table finishes in the $27 Weekly Saturday Eliminator on PokerStars, where within 75 days, he won it twice and finished 9^th the third time.

The 24 year old made his first trip to WSOP in 2014 and made three cashes, besides making it to Day 2 of the UKIPT Main Event. He has been active throughout at the online felts notching up the scores and at a young age spouts philosophy about losses. Karan believes that one learns from disappointments and says, “Firstly, I decided that it was ok to fail. The disappointments faced by many successful people, have served as huge catalysts in making them great.”

Read his poker story here.

25 year-old Bangalorean Dyuthidhar Suresh was at WSOP, when we featured him as a Young Gun in July. Contradicting training as an engineer and actor notwithstanding, Suresh followed his passion for poker instead. He has even worked as a dealer to support his game and considers himself “Destiny’s Child.”

Suresh bagged his first trip to WSOP through the Golden Aces Poker League (GAPL) Season Finale WSOP Sit-‘n’-Go. 2014 was his second trip to WSOP and he made 2 cashes. Amongst his other scores, Suresh made 3^rd place at the THOS Main event for ₹1,75,000 in March 2014.

“Just be patient! Never get too greedy. Bankroll management is very very important and DO NOT GAMBLE (like roulette, cricket betting, etc). I have seen good poker players going bust because of poor bankroll management”are Suresh’s parting words to aspiring players.

Read his poker story here.

In Sep 2014, Akash Malik was our next Young Gun who ruefully admitted that he gets to play only when not attending to his full time job of trading commodities.

Akash made 5^th place at the MPC Red Dragon in Jan 2014 for HK $430,000. In Aug, he once again made 5^th place in the Team Event with Aditya “donkab0mber” Sushant for HK $10,200 at the Macau Poker Cup. Akash was also part of the Indian contingent at WSOP in 2014 and participated in the Main event too.

The 32-year-old Delhi based player adds that the best way to excel at poker is to practice as much as possible. He states,“There is no better way of learning anything in life than to practice. Also talking to experienced players about hands and real life poker situations has helped me a lot.”

Read his poker story here.

We can certainly expect to see a lot more action from these players in 2015 and PokerGuru raises a Toast to these Young Guns and many others who await their turn in the wings to emerge and shine!