“I was fascinated every time I saw my brother playing tournaments on Poker Stars. So I started watching videos on the game and playing with play money. Later, when I went to do my Bachelors in Business from Symbiosis, Pune, I saw some students play micro-stakes for real money. That was how I started playing very small, and soon discovered that I was good among my peers, even with very little knowledge,” recalls the 28 year old Arjanveer. And has it been a smooth ride since the beginning? “No, I got a huge reality check when a few friends including me went to Goa, and we knew we could play poker at the casinos there. At a time when we used to play for Rs. 200 – Rs. 500 Buy Ins, I was shocked to know that the minimum was Rs. 10,000 in Goan casinos. But, I still decided to give it a try.” And we guess correctly that he lost it all! “In 30 minutes,” he says. With gradual understanding and support coming from friends and family who were skeptical initially, he tried his hands in a couple of things but nothing gave him the kind of satisfaction poker does. “My main reason to switch was that I was doing well, and I knew I had a backup plan ready even if I didn’t sustain through poker.”
“In live poker, you need so much more patience and the rate of hands / hour is also slow. As someone who doesn’t like waiting too much, I prefer online.” This impatience and lack of wanting to wait probably got him his two big online titles in two days! “In addition, I like multi-tabling and saving notes on opponents which really help in crucial spots, which I can’t do live.” What does Arjanveer prefer – cash games or tournaments? “The glory is in tournaments but the sustainability is more in cash games.” Being a good player, you can go for months in tournaments without making a decent amount, which can get frustrating. The best way according to him is to create a balance and strategy by combining both the formats according to what suits the player better, as it may work differently for different people.
Last night and the night before, Arjanveer won Adda52’s online ‘Godfather’ and ‘Whale’ and we talk about the experience. “Individually, these are not my biggest online wins, but they mean a lot more to me, because of the deeper structures and the tough field where you really need to grind it out. Especially, when the bubble broke, the average stack was around 50BB, which is pretty good. And, I really needed to win!” Two ships in two days on the same platform, one could call it luck, what does he think? “Skill v/s luck is a phenomenon which has been much discussed in poker. You can be lucky only in a short time period. No one who shows consistent performance over long periods of time can attribute it to luck. It pretty much evens itself out in the long run. Good players work hard at their game and put themselves in good spots in deep stages of tournaments consistently.”
Another thing Arjanveer is thankful for, is the concept of India Poker Ranking. “There was no criteria to rank Indian poker players and I had no answer to people who asked me how my poker ranking stands in the country when I told them I play the game for a living. Well, now I do! Consistent players are getting much recognition now for their tremendous hard work, improvement and consistent results which is very motivating. I am truly appreciative of it, and I wish the team the best.”
Congratulations again ‘arjan30’ and we hope to see another big pay-day for you today!