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SSS: Vivek Rughani wins the Mega Stack for ?2,68,470

28-year old Vivek Rughani who plays under the moniker ‘Pokerbatman27’ has nailed the SSS #8 Mega Stack (12L GTD) (RE) event for INR 2,68,470. Hailing from Ahmedabad, Gujarat, Rughani had previously shipped the Spartan Super Series HighRoller event and also topped the leaderboard last year in the month of November. In last night’s event, Rughani defeated another online reg Vishal ‘vishaltulsya’ Tulsyan in heads-up battle for which the latter received a prize of INR 1,94,288. The event saw 471 entries making a prizepool of INR 14,13,000 which was distributed to top 45 players with a min cash of INR 7,772.

The tournament concluded in Level #47 with blinds running 30,000-60,000-7,500 where ‘Pokerbatman27’ pushed pre-flop all-in with 7h 7s and ‘vishaltulsya’ had Ts Qs. The board 5c Ac 3c Js 9s didn’t help ‘vishaltulsya’s overcards pair up and he took the second place in this event while ‘Pokerbatman27’ shipped the title with his pocket pair.

Gutshot caught up with the winner Vivek Rughani on this win as well as his recent Deltin Poker Tournament PLO deep finish and here are the excerpts:- 

Congratulations Vivek. Please take us through your journey in the Mega Stack tournament.

Had just reached home from Goa pretty tired so was 1 tabling from start. Built a decent stack to start with (55k at 150/300) but then Rishabh Jain came to the table which made us lose our whole stack as he was shoving any two cards and we ran into hands with someone else. Took a re-entry and got a double up through him. After that though, it was smooth sailing till the end. 

Turning points in the tournament?

Key turning hand was the final table bubble when I 3-bet Aces in a blind vs blind battle. Flop came 2x 3x 4x ‘praf11’ had set of 4s. Money went in on flop we clip the 5 to get to 3rd in chips on FT. On the final table we doubled blind vs blind through ‘vishaltulsya’ with Aces vs 6x 6x in a 4-bet pot. After that had a commanding CL and didn’t have much hindrance.

What do you do to improve your game?

Not studying as much as I should but watching vids on RIO, Tournament master class from Upswing poker and watching streams (tonkaaaap, Doug Polk) etc.

Next tournament or series you are looking forward to?

WPT India should be exciting and will be the final live event I might attend as live is not so plus EV unless you satellite in. For online I suppose it will be whatever TheSpartanPoker is coming up with I suppose it will be IOPC now.

Anything else you want to share.

Looking forward to competing for the TLB and play all events which I was going to skip due to Navratri which is the best part of the year for a Gujarati but I guess it will have to wait a bit.

Besides the Mega Stack win, Rughani is on top of the INR 10 Lakhs leaderboard of SSS were the up top is INR 5 Lakhs.

Here are the side event results from Day 1 and Day 2 of SSS:

SSS #1 INR 770 (140K GTD) FO 

235 entries made up a prizepool of INR 1,64,500 which was distributed to top 30 places with a min-cash of INR 1,234. The event saw ‘aditya purohit’ claiming the first event of SSS for INR 34,545. ‘aditya purohit’ defeated ‘Bubbleboy’ in heads-up battle who took home INR 24,182 for second place finish.

SSS #2 INR 330 (150K GTD) (R+A)

The second event of the day saw 555 participants in the field which generated a prizepool of INR 1,66,500. The prizepool was distributed to top 24 places with a min-cash of INR 1,665. The eventual winner was ‘nutalways’ to take down the title for INR 38,295. ‘nutlaways’ outlasted ‘maverick7’ in final battle who took second place and INR 25,724.

SSS #3 INR 1,650 (450K GTD) (RE)

This event drew a total of 322 entries crushing the guaranteed prizepool making it to INR 4,83,000 where top 30 players took a share of it with a min-cash of INR 3,623. ‘$ubZero’ emerged victorious in this event with a first-place prize of INR 1,01,430. ‘$ubZero’ defeated ‘winner2016’ in the heads-up battle who collected INR 71,001 for second place finish.

SSS #4 INR 7,700 (15L GTD) (FO)

The Freezeout tournament saw 166 entries where Abhishek ‘boboda’ Ravi outlasted these entries for INR 3,45,000 where he said, “A big shoutout to Aditya Agarwal as I was a part of one social media group that helped my tourney game a lot!”

Ravi defeated ‘jaspkr’ in the final round where ‘jaspkr’ took home INR 2,31,750 for the second place finish.

SSS #5 INR 220 (100K GTD) (R+A)

A total of 676 participants took part in this tournament creating a prizepool of INR 1,35,200 where top 27 players took a share with min cash of INR 1,217. ‘Maganshonit’ outlasted these entries defeating ‘cafeliliput’ in a heads-up battle. ‘Maganshonit’ took home INR 29,744 for the first place finish while ‘cafeliliput’ took home INR 20,744 for second place finish.

SSS #6 INR 440 (125K GTD) (RE)

The re-entry tournament saw 334 entries which made up a prizepool of INR 1,33,600. Top 27 players took a share of the prizepool with a min-cash of INR 1,203. ‘ankitw’ took down the title for INR 29,392 while the second place finisher ‘Anurag goud’ took INR 19,906.

SSS #7 INR 1,100 (200K GTD) (FO)

The Freezeout tournament drew 250 players to make a prizepool of INR 2,50,000 where top 36 players with a min-cash of INR 1,625. ‘maverick7’ took down the title for INR 50,000 while ‘stackattack1’ took home INR 35,000 for second place finish.

After two days of SSS here is the updated leaderboard with INR 10,00,000 up for grabs

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