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WSOP 2019: Vivek Rughani, Paawan Bansal among 9 Indians at BIG 50

As most of you may already know, the prestigious World Series of Poker (WSOP) kicked off a couple of nights back in Las Vegas, with two events already ending and bracelets being handed out. While there wasn’t any Indian participation in those couple of tournaments, Day 1A of the third event has ended and India has announced itself, with 9 contenders progressing.

Event #3: BIG 50 – $500 No-Limit Hold’em was a much-awaited tournament and with a buy-in of just $500, it attracted a huge field of 6,148 entries. 12 Levels of play took place on Day 1A and the tournament seems well on course to break WSOP records in terms of the playing field. By the end of the first starting flight, 1,620 players bagged chips to continue on Day 2A and among them were a number of Indian players.

Leading the chip counts for Team India was Vivek Rughani, someone who created headlines last year for his 88th place finish in the WSOP Main Event. He holds a stack of 487k chips while Paawan Bansal is also in the mix with 342k, also a player who made several deep runs in WSOP 2018.

Apart from these two who have above average stacks, seven other Indians progressed including Abhinav Iyer (298k), Kunal Patni (265k), Deepak Bothra (232k), Sriharsha Doddapaneni (219k), Dhawal Lachhwani (94k), and Aman Kejriwal (56k). Indian origin Nipun Java also progressed with 87k. All of them will be looking to chip up come Day 2A. All of these guys are highly talented and have major past achievements as well.

Italian player Cosimo Bisogno ended with 932k chips on Day 1A and ended as the chip leader. This tournament is expected to be a massive one, with 3 starting flights still to come followed by Day 2A, 2B, 2C and 2D before we reach Day 3 which is expected to be the final day of the tournament.

For all updates from BIG 50 and other exciting tournaments at WSOP 2019, keep following GutshotMagazine.com. Remember, it’s only the start and India’s hunt for its third gold bracelet is on!

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