Abhinav Iyer- The young Indian to win WSOP 2019 Bracelet
World Series of Poker WSOP hosted its 50th Annual Event from 28th May to 16th July 2019 and the proud winner of this biggest poker tournament in the world is young Indian Abhinav Iyer. The WSOP 2019 tournament was attended by many Indian players, who earned a total of $1,701,074 at the tournament, bringing India at position 18 among all the participating countries.
Last year, Paawan Bansal had come close to capturing the title in this very event but had ultimately lost out to former Main Event Champion Joe Cada, finishing runner-up instead for Rs 2.60 Crores. Iyer has created history by not only winning the coveted gold bracelet, but also by securing a personal best score Rs.3.87 Crores which happens to be the highest score by an Indian at the series till date!
There have been several close calls this year with many members of Team India coming excruciatingly close to claiming the gold bracelet. Raghav Bansal and PokerGuru Ambassador Ashish Ahuja came the closest in Event #42: $600 Mixed NL Hold’em/PL Omaha Deepstack 8-Handed. While Bansal had bagged his best score at the WSOP by finishing third for Rs.61.64 Lakhs, Ahuja locked in a personal-best Rs,34.10 Lakhs by finishing fifth.
Abhinav Iyer’s Bracelet Win at WSOP 2019
Indian players also had a total of 148 cashes, placing India at the 17th position for total cashes. One event where India’s Player Abhinav Iyer made a mark was Event #84: The Closer – $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em. Iyer won his first-ever bracelet at $1500 Closer event with the prize of $565,346 (INR 3.87 Crore). This event at the 2019 World Series Of Poker was one of the last events with big payouts. Abhinav Iyer is the fourth Indian-origin player to win a bracelet after Nipun Java (2017; California-based), Aditya Sushant (2017) and Nikita Luther (2018). The latter three won their bracelets in tag team events.
Besides the prize money, Iyer also won 1200 POY (Player of the Year) points.
So far, Robert Campbell has the highest POY points (3418.78 points) to become 2019 Player of the Year, followed by Shaun Deeb (3280.13 points) and Daniel Negreanu (3166.24 points). Here is the full and updated list of POY on WSOP’s website. The 2019 Players of the Year is being decided on the basis of 83 bracelet events in Las Vegas and 10 bracelet events at WSOP Europe (Oct 15 – Nov 4).
Before Iyer, six other Indians cashed in this tournament:
- Siddharth Mundada – 73rd for $5,956
- Kalyan Chakravarthy – 98th for $4,401
- Himmat Singh – 176th for $3,500
- Shashank Jain – 189th for $3,500
- Chirag Patel – 239th for $2,744
- Nishant Sharma – 275th for $2,530
On the day of his win, Iyer told WSOP reporters that he won crucial pots at the right time and it was his luck that his table on day one was pretty good, and on final day he came up with over 50 big blinds so he knew he could maneuver his stack.
Iyer who is just 25 years old, after this grand win celebrated with his friends and family. On asking how will he spend his winning money, he replied that he is not a spender and only one thing he wants to do with his winnings and that is to put the prize money in the bank and to save for his future needs.