A new poker tournament is coming to India. On top of the upcoming PokerBaazi Premier League (PPL) Winter Edition, the site will host another event with a huge prize pool. The Game Changer will be a single tournament offering a guarantee of 2 crore (US$280,021).
The guarantee may not be as much as what will be offered at the PPL – 5 crore ($700,032) – but it is still a respectable prize pool. The Game Changer tournament winner will take home a minimum of 50 lakhs ($69,999).
According to Navkiran Singh, CEO of PokerBaazi, “We have added another gear to our drive of [metamorphosing] Indian Poker. This is yet another milestone, and for sure, a game changer!”
PokerBaazi introduced the first tournament in poker to offer a guarantee of 1 crore (about $140,000). That tournament was dubbed The MoneyMaker and went down in Indian history as one of the most important, industry-changing tournaments seen It attracted 800 players in a country that has mixed emotions about the legitimacy of poker and awarded 30 lakh ($42,000) to the eventual winner, Anujkumar ‘aatmaan’ Kodam.
That event has now turned into an annual affair and has gone through seven seasons. Most recently, The MoneyMaker saw its largest turnout to date, resulting in a prize pool of 1.36 crore ($190,392). That tournament was won by Nikhil ‘stringbet710’ Sayilen, who pocketed 33 lakhs ($46,198).
The final details of The Game Changer have yet to be released. Once they are, however, it will certainly receive immediate attention and a massive field.
PokerBaazi was initially founded in 2014. It has had to fight an uphill battle that has seen some Indian states acknowledging that poker is a game of skill, while others still believe that it is nothing more than a game of chance. The fact that it has been able to survive shows the company’s fortitude.
According to its website, “[PokerBaazi] is safe, trusted, secure, impartial and a lot of fun. We serve interesting deals every day, new tournaments and events every week, and 4 major series every year. We also feature the some of the biggest online tournament brands like MoneyMaker and PokerBaazi Premier League. Our vast fan following includes some of the most noted names in the game like Abhisek Panda, Abhishek Rathod, Vikram Kumar, Maria Kirloskar, Jasven Saigal- just to name a few.”
