5 reasons behind the growth of Indian Poker

Poker has been the most popular card game the world over for some time, but it has recently started to take off in a big way in India.

Whether you want to play poker in India at home, play in a club, or play online poker at one of the many available online poker sites, it has never been more popular.

We look at some of the reasons that the Indian Poker market has grown so much over recent years.

2017 WSOP

India recently had their first WSOP bracelet winners in the form of Aditya Sushant and Nipun Java. They took down not 1 but 2 tournaments at the 2017 WSOP, teaming up to win the $1,000 Tag Team event with Java then going it alone to win the $1,000 Online NL Hold’Em Championship.

Sushant also made another final table, capping off a very good tournament for Indian poker in general.

Professional Players

On top of Aditya and Nipun, the success of many Indian Poker professionals has been high over the last few years.

Raghav Bansal won over Hong Kong $1m by chopping the HK$50,000 NLH event at the Macau Poker Cup in 2017 and in the same year Nikita Luther finished 5^th for a career best payout of in the WPT500 Aria Las Vegas event and Varun Gupta took down the APT Finale Macau Championships Main Event to claim the title and over HK$300k in prize money.

There is suddenly an array of talent in the world of professional poker players for young Indian players to look up to and to try and emulate leading to more players taking it up as a career as opposed to a hobby.

Online Poker Options

The number of online poker sites in India has risen significantly in recent years too giving players more variety in terms of software, promotions and tournaments.

With poker online in India gaining popularity, there are more and more players who are taking it up professionally and with some MTT’s having a prize pool of over 1 million Indian Krona, they don’t even need to always win to earn a nice pay day.

There are a variety of promotions and features to entice poker players in India now with rakeback, freerolls, guaranteed tournaments, upgraded software and even instant cashouts being available all on one site at Poker Stellar, just one of a number of big online poker sites who are cashing in on the popularity of online poker in India.

Poker Leagues

Offline poker leagues have seen a surge in popularity over recent years too which has led to part of the increase in the popularity of online poker in India as players take part in cash games and tournaments from the comfort of their own home at any time of day or night.

The Poker Sports League (PSL), Match Indian Poker League (MIPL) and Global Player League (GPL) India have all come to life over the last couple of years and have seen a number of high profile winners and life changing sums of money go to the winners and those who reach the final table.

Live Tournament in India

Whilst we are on the subject of live poker, it is worth looking at some of the big poker tournaments that take place in India such as the first ever WPT India event in the country and the introduction of a WPT India Player of the Year Award. Amongst the first winners were Vikash Mantri who won the inaugural Main Event and Rajnish Kumar who won the High Roller event.

There have been the Deltin Poker Tournament, Baadshah Gaming Live Tournament and a number of large tournaments at casinos in Goa such as the Casino Pride.

Conclusion

All of these factors added to the fact that some jurisdictions seem to be relaxing the law on online poker and gaming in general mean that online poker in India has never been in better health or had as many options for players in the past.

The future is certainly looking bright!