“I loved playing poker. So, I would leave work around 8 pm typically and go play live games after that sometimes past midnight. I quit that prior to winning my live title at DPT.”
Today, we have a banker-turned-poker professional Ankit Kapoor with us in our Rising Poker Stars segment. Ankit has made a name for himself in both the circuits – live and online. He has been in the news for past 15 days winning back to back online titles on Adda52 and is also looking forward to Spartan Poker’s this month mega-event IOPC.
Here are the excerpts of the chat session:
First of all a big congratulations to you on winning Adda52’s Hitman title on Tuesday night. For those who do not follow poker regularly, can you introduce yourself to them?
I’m born and brought up in Delhi and got introduced to Poker during a visit to Goa. I started playing online by keeping 2 lacs aside and playing 2k and below Buy-ins PLO games. I played my first live tournament in DPT July 2018 and glad that I came 20th in that main event.
I would like to tell our readers that you won the 2019 DPT February edition Main Event. And recently you have also bagged a couple of online titles including AOPS Big Stack Turbo on 29th June. So, what do you prefer playing more is it live poker games or online games?
I personally preferred playing live earlier. I was winning consistently playing live cash games in my first 12 months stint as a poker player, but lately wasn’t playing the best poker in the live circuit for a couple of months.
I think online, and live have entirely different dynamics. One good thing about playing online is that I can play many more tables simultaneously and the games run at twice the speed, so one can actually put on volume which reduces variance.
On your Facebook profile, you have mentioned working at the ICICI bank. So, tell me a bit about it. When did you decide to convert into a full-time poker player?
I was working in the banking sector. I loved playing poker. So, I would leave work around 8 pm typically and go play live games after that sometimes past midnight. I quit that prior to winning my live title at DPT, so that title definitely felt special.
So, now when you are a full-time poker player, can you tell a little about your lifestyle or daily routine?
I’m doing a couple of gigs, just keeping it private at the moment.
Is there a story behind your screen name, i.e. helter_skelter?
It’s just being a Beatles fan. It’s probably the world’s first and Beatles only heavy metal song, and it sounded a bit chaotic!
Are you going to take part in Spartan Poker’s IOPC?
Yeah, I am looking forward to playing a few tournaments in IOPC. Especially the PLOs and the deep structured ones.
I guess you love playing PLO more than Hold’em. Is there any specific reason?
I personally feel PLO is a somewhat better game than Texas. To start with, there are so many combinations, so it mathematically more advanced Texas.
And in Texas, if you lose to a cooler, e.g. flush under flush etc., you technically did nothing wrong, but it’s common for people to let go of even second nut flush in PLO.
I could write many more things, but it would become a separate topic altogether. Biggest caveat I should definitely highlight is PLO comes with much more variance than Texas.
Do you think tournament players get more attention than the cash game players?
I think cash games should be popularized more. Just giving an analogy, the casinos in India would organize a DPT, BPT or IOPC for 4 days and 4 times in a month, and outside these 16 days in a year, it’s the cash games which are taking place. And it goes the same for the online as well.
Maybe cash games players deserve more, but there is not much to track in that. But it’s been a great initiative to promote the cash games with the back to back festivals by PokerBaazi and an upcoming one by Poker Dangal.
Which are the Indian websites you love playing at? Which will be the one at the top spot and why?
As a player, first preference goes to the games and the action. Since I prefer PLO and PLO5 more, PokerBaazi had the most PLO5 action, so I was playing exclusively there.
I can only give my personal opinion about what I feel is good about each site. Hopefully, the site can provide a better interface and experience to players in all aspects.
I think Spartan had the best App-based UI, and it set the benchmark so high, that I didn’t even have an account for long on other sites, so yes to me app UI mattered a lot.
Earlier I was only playing on apps, as I was playing live games almost every day.
I recently started playing on Adda52 on their window’s interface just a couple of weeks back, and I love the app, it’s simple, and I can see the hand clearly which is what should be prioritized.
Also, I feel PokerBaazi has the best customer service. Like recently, when the site had an outage, they offered a lot of perks to the players. Also, the rake back of 30-40% to the cash games players is amongst the highest.
Also, I have been playing PLO5 on the website called Poker Magnet, almost every day.
Where do you feel a newbie can go wrong like if you have any tips for them?
As a newbie, one should start with Bankroll management. I would suggest having at least 80 buy-ins for Texas and 200 Buy-in for PLO and immediately drop down in stakes when you have half of it. Regarding the learning curve, there would be many players much more qualified than me to answer that.
Stay tuned to check out the next Rising Poker Star!