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Persistent Yowan Patel finally wins Destiny

The Spartan Poker, easily in the tops when it comes to online poker in India, hosts a Wednesday feature tournament called Destiny, where players chip in the INR 5.5k buy-in and the winner takes away the 1st place cash prize and a seat into the Destiny SnG Finale worth INR 1 Lakh. Ten of these winners battle it out for the INR 10 Lakhs Europe package trip in the Finale.

This tournament series has given plenty of aspirants in the past a chance to have a live experience in a foreign country. After the Destiny 7.0 SnG Finale, won by well-known pro Sriharsha Doddapaneni, it was immediately time to host Destiny 8.0.

Yesterday saw the 3rd tournament – Destiny INR 20 Lakhs GTD – of the series in the books. The winner to emerge from the grind and the 3^rd entrant into the Destiny 8.0 SnG Finale scheduled for 3^rd April 2019 was Yowan Patel aka ‘Yopat92’. He took home INR 6,77,075 as 1^st place cash prize yesterday.

The tournament yesterday went on for almost 8 hours, starting at 7.30 pm and ending at 3.16 am today morning. Patel beat a field of 511 entries (including 107 re-entries and 186 re-buys) to secure his title beating ‘lolMinions’ in heads-up. These entries together smashed the guarantee and created a new prize pool of INR 25+ Lakhs.

The final hand in heads-up was interesting as Patel beat lolMinions with a full house on the river. He was packing pocket Twos and his opponent was with Jh 7d. The flop of 9c 2s 8h gave Patel a set and lolMinons a gutshot draw. Patel raised to 157.5k and his opponent called to see the turn of Th, making a Jack-high straight with it. lolMinions bet another 202,500, confident of his straight, and received a call. The river of Tc proved to be the cherry on the cake for Patel, who made a full house. Patel shoved his stack and lolMinions called, but was soon disappointed to see Patel’s superior hand. The runner-up had to settle for INR 4,21,575 for his 2^nd place finish.

We spoke to Patel after his victory and he told us quite enthusiastically, “I have been playing tournaments in the last 5 months regularly and have finished a lot in second places. I finished runner-up in Destiny twice earlier so shipping this one was a great moment for me. I’m hoping for this to be the start of great things to come.”

The Chennai-based player talked about his gameplay and experience yesterday saying, “It was a great heads up battle with lolMinions as he had 5:1 chip lead against me when at the start, so grinding and shipping the tournament feels like an accomplishment and makes it even better. I was playing patiently in the Final Table since I had a good chip lead and I think that did the trick, not making decisions in haste. Lastly, I would like to thank Spartan for conducting very good value tournaments throughout.”

Patel’s first Destiny runner-up finish was in the 6th edition where ‘Exhaust‘ took home the title. After that, he came 2nd again in the first Destiny tournament of the following edition (7th) but was deafeated by Sathish Ananth in heads-up. However, he bagged sizeable pay-checks in both. Patel had also finished runner-up in IOPC SuperStack last month for INR 5,99,250, succumbing to Ankur Aryan in heads-up.  Yesterday’s victory finally saw his efforts bear fruits and has earned him his career best online cash too.

In the end, talking about Spartan’s Destiny initiative he said, “Spartan’s Destiny promotions have been great, and a lot of players have started playing tournaments recently and Destiny is one of the biggest tournaments every week, attracting a lot of players from across the country. I think Spartan is the best platform for tournament players since it offers a lot of high value tournaments like no other site does. It’s Instant Bonus and TDS options are also great as well.”

As the tournament was reputed and among the most popular ones, a fair number of regs were in contention yesterday. Out of the top 40 places paid, some of them include Chandan Arora (4^th – INR 1,60,965), IOPC Main Event winner Ashish Munot (6^th – INR 89,425), Anirban Das (10^th – INR 38,325), Pranjal Gandhi (13^th – INR 30,660), Pranav Bang (16^th – INR 22,995), Vivek Singh (18^th – INR 22,995) and Abhineet Jain (34^th – INR 15,330).

Keep reading GutshotMagazine.com for more such tournament roundups and results and for general poker news from across the planet.

Don’t have an account on The Spartan Poker? Check out their review page here, and don’t miss out on their bonuses, promotions, and guarantee-smashing tournaments. Sign-up now.

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