Started playing during graduation days at BITS Pilani but stopped playing after grad. However, during my MBA from IIFT Delhi, we went to IMT Ghaziabad for a inter college cricket tournament. The cricket match was next day. Right before heading to bed, I and a friend stopped by a poker tournament happening. The friend asked me if I knew how to play and I went ahead and started with minimum chips among all players. Went on to win that tournament (INR 15k). So that was the tipping point. Soon, I started organizing poker in our college and played often. After college, picked up onling poker at spartan and soon moved to other Indian sites such as pokerbaazi, adda52. Currently, I work as a manager in Accenture consulting so find it difficult to devote a lot but able to spend 10-15 hours each week mainly on Natural8 tournaments.

5-6

MBA from IIFT Delhi

Lot of patience, a defined strategy and game selection (you don't want to run against stronger players and lose)

It's a hobby and I am a student of the game. I am more interested in non-monetary part on being better vs field and learning.

I prefer MTTs (poker tournaments) vs cash games since there's a thrill to beating the field and upside. I am disciplined on average buy ins and mainly play similar buy in games where I have been profitable before.

Patience, a defined strategy on how to approach situations/spots and repeatable process that can be scaled consistently.

Personally I haven't except when once a guy didn't keep his word on poker coaching. I raised it with community to make others aware but I think mostly it's a very inretupated space (outside of the online sites). Thankfully wasn't a big amount.

Yes, I am very active on IPPA and Poker Players Group. You will find a lot of polls which I keep doing to check pulse of which sites are better, what sites should improve or just out of curiousity or for player awareness. The response is generally good.

That's a big issue in current player population. For all practical purposes, poker gives dopamine rush and the thrill/uncertainity of it can make people take bad decisions. I keep coming across folks who are debt trapped or worse depressed given losses. Hence important to know one's limits and always play with a mindset that poker is a losing game and only 2-5% of players become ultra profitable. This mindset can help limit unnecessary risk and only risk money that even if lost won't impact your life in any tangible way

Aware yes. I think regulating any space only causes more hurdles. The idea should be to have minimum regulations that too targetted at frauds and scams vs player pool in general or curbing sites and their profits. (Like the 30© tax on earnings right now)

It's there to stay. From IPL to poker, online gaming industry is blosoming in India and only paperless, limited regulations will help it grow which invariably helps government too in terms of earnings. Also, having different laws in each state complicated it. One policy across nation is need of the hour.

National Poker Series - 3 medals (2023 - 1 and 2025 - 2), Natural8, Adda5 - Couple of tournaments