Rubin Labroo
31-year-old Rubin makes several trips to Goa every year for global poker tournaments and recently traveled to Vietnam for the Asian Poker League. But long before he was a tournament hopping big-league player, he was a computer engineer in the making who discovered he had a knack for the game playing online as “kornkid”. Eventually, he made the hardest decision of his life, dropping out of college and working at a friend’s startup.
A change in job and a move from Chennai to Delhi, while still playing poker on the side, Rubin realised he needed a more aggressive strategy. He moved out of his parents’ house and went all in after building a sufficient bankroll, taking up poker full-time. There were ups and downs, but with his hard (and more importantly smart) work, he won the country’s biggest ever online tournament until then - the main event at PokerBaazi’s Poker Premier League’18 – and ended up bagging Rs 35.4 lakh! Rubin just bagged his biggest Live win at WPT Vietnam’19 and took home a whopping Rs 27 lakh by placing second in the tournament.
About his future plans, Rubin says, “I am planning to go for more live events in the future as it offers great exposure and you get to travel to new places. Other than that, I guess I’ll do the usual: grind online and keep the bankroll boosted. There’s just so much value online, in addition to the comfort and ease of online gaming.”
Ankit Jijodia
Whoever said practice makes perfect must have been talking about Ankit ‘akj290’ Jijodia. A 26-year old poker pro and perfectionist to the core, he completed a 40-day online marathon grind in 2017, playing minor tournaments to seal loopholes in his game, following which he topped the first major tournament he played. A three-pronged strategy of watching YouTube videos, studying the big players and sharpening his game through free online tournaments helped him develop his knowledge and paid dividends.
Cash games aren’t his style. He plays at least 300 tournaments every month, and that’s just online. He has also played live in Goa, been to Manila twice, and visited Vietnam for the Asian Poker Tournament. He plans to continue making it big in the Asian poker circuit, while new opportunities in India such as the Baazi Poker Tour are also on the cards. Through it all, he continues training for his long-term goal, the World Series Of Poker.
“Poker takes years of unidirectional focus, untiring hard work, top-notch gaming skills and a never-say-die attitude to master,” he says. He should know. After all, it took a lot of courage to bid goodbye to his family business to focus on playing poker. But his parents were supportive of his decision, and that helped him hit stellar shows over PokerBaazi's tournaments Endeavour and Baazi Super Sundays. It was then that he knew poker was his way forward in life.