Young Guns of Poker: Amit R Jain

Amit R Jain
  • Profile picture
  • PG News March 30, 2013
  • 4 Minutes Read

27 year old Amit R Jain (cover image) is one of rising stars of Indian Poker. Amit plays the game only semi-professionally but has already added numerous wins both online and live including a win at the last edition of the Micro millions on PokerStars. His resume boasts of numerous deep finishes at the Macau Poker Cup too! In this article, Amit shares with us his poker story.

 

How it all started

Poker for me started, as you would expect with most of the people i.e. through Facebook. I lost millions of chips on Zynga poker but managed to learn the basics of the game. By then it had became trendy and cool to play poker home games and that’s what we all friends also did getting in games with buy-in of ₹500 and stuff. The real turning point in the first phase for me was around 4 years back when I learnt about BPC (Bombay Poker Club), which is now known as IPC. They used to have tournaments every Sunday and I went there a couple of times and busted almost as soon as I registered. Soon thereafter they came up with a championship league, which was 3 months long, and you would get points based on the place you finish every Sunday. I managed to win like 3-4 tourneys during that time and a handful of runner up finishes and ended up winning the championship. I still remember it was a very close finish and I was so excited and pumped up that I did not sleep for more than 2-3 hours everyday in the week prior to the last crowning Sunday where I fortunately managed to come 2nd to seal my championship win. It meant a lot to me!

 

Real Poker and Success

After this win I decided to go to Goa for an IPC main event in which I finished 2nd runner up. Then came a 2-year phase where I played very little poker due to work commitments and my marriage. My friends kept trying to convince me to start playing online poker but I always said that I will never play online in my life because its such a bad addiction and stuff. Finally I relented around a year back and started playing MTT’s on PokerStars with $100 but unlike most of the successful pro’s, I did not hit it off with my first $100. In fact I went on a monstrous down swing from the word go but I could easily take it in my stride because firstly money was not really a problem for me and secondly I could see my game improving every day. The good phase finally came after 8 months of bad play and bad run when I started shipping 1000+ fields tourneys every week and at times every second day. One of the happiest moments was when I shipped a 20,000 + player field MICRO MILLIONS event. I have never felt such an adrenaline rush ever in my life! Then came the hotter 75, hotter 109, big 22, big 8.80, big 33 and fortunately the list went on for me.

 

Family and Work Life Harmony

I come from a Marwari family hence I wasn’t sure how my parents would react if I told them that I play real money poker and want to continue to do so. To my utter surprise they were thrilled when I told them that I want to take up poker seriously. My wife is probably the best human being I have come across in my life and she is also the most understanding and supporting wife I could have ever dreamt of. Online poker takes a lot of toll on your family life because of the numerous late nights of grinding but she has always supported me. The past 12 months I have been striving to achieve a perfect balance between work, poker and family and I must admit it’s been very tough. On an average I haven’t slept for more than 5 hours throughout the year, as I have to be at work by 10.30-ish. But I have no major complains and love my life. As far as the live scene is concerned its been a dream run for me there too because I chopped one event in Macau and finished super deep in the Macau Poker Cup (MPC) main event in 15th place and recently won the IPC main event following it up the very next week by chopping the IPA event at Bangalore for 1st eventually finishing 2nd. I have played 4 live events this year and final tabled all 4 of them so no complains here. Off late I have also started playing cash games seriously but very soon I will have to take a call on what I want to do because this schedule is taking a massive toll on my health and my memory power has also reduced considerably. My doctor has attributed it to lack of sleep and random times of sleeping (so I am guessing work will have to take a back seat).

 

Friendly Advice

My advice to anyone looking forward to take up poker seriously would be that you have to be prepared to be physically, mentally and emotionally very strong. One has to be completely dedicated and try and never worry about bad beats just smile at them when they hurt the most and your pain will be diminished, that’s` what I try to do. Poker life is a great life to live so just start off by managing your roll properly and try to learn faster than others. You will soon find yourself travelling the world playing poker. I am surely not the best role model for bankroll management but now I am improving and I realize the importance to do so. I guess beginners should approach the game with a balanced view i.e. learn the game half the time and play in the other half. By learning I mean you could read books watch videos or watch replays. I am not much of a reader but I watch replays and videos every single day. Super Tuesday final tables are the best replays to watch, Sunday million final tables are a little turbo-ish.

 

Future Goals

My future goals are to somehow get a 50k + score online and hopefully ship an event at the MPC which is coming up soon because if I do so then I have promised myself to give WSOP a shot.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank a few of my lifelines who have been really instrumental especially Kavish Kukreja who has been like a wall with me in each and every phase and supported me and encouraged me immensely during my bad phase. Jasven Saigal has been like an elder brother to me, Kanishka, Romit and Shravan have always helped me with my game. When I was new to online poker, I used to call Kanishka like 5 times a day for advice and he always helped me. I have not changed even 1% as a person to what I was prior to my good run and its most important I guess for everyone to stay grounded. Respect people who have been with you during your tough phase. That’s it I guess…. work hard, play hard, respect the game and keep shipping! Thank you for everything poker Gods and please continue to smile on me and my friends.

0 0 votes
Article Rating

Related Players

Subscribe
Notify of
0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Top Online Poker Rooms

Top
PokerGuru