The past few years have seen a meteoric rise in poker fever across the country as a number of online poker portals have sprung up while poker rooms have also been made legal in select areas across the country.
College students, their parents, and people from various backgrounds in the country now have accounts on websites like adda52.com and others which allow users to play with real money against real players across the country.
Sensing an opportunity in this sector, three entrepreneurs, Amit Burman, Anuj Gupta and Pranav Bagai came up with India’s first ever professional poker competition, the Poker Sports League, to offer the Indian poker community an open and transparent chance at being a part of one of 12 teams fighting it out for ultimate poker glory.
The league has also been designed to change the image of poker from a gambling sport to one requiring skill such as football or cricket.
One of the 12 teams in the Poker Sports League is the Gujarat Acers, which represents talent from the Western region of the country. Mentored by Sumit Asrani, the team consists of professional poker players Abhinav Iyer and Bhavesh Nainani, joined by two live qualifying players Anish Juwarkar and Ramesh Rao Thotapalli, online qualifiers Manesh Rathod and Mayank Jain and two wildcard entrants in Henrik Tollefsen and Raman Gujral.
The Gujarat Acers are owned by co-founders of the SMILE Group, Manish Vij and Harish Bahl, who specialise in digital marketing and online entrepreneurship. The two poker crazy businessmen decided to invest in their passion by purchasing a franchise in the inaugural edition of the Poker Sports League.
With the league currently in full flow at the Deltin Casino in Goa, we at Sportskeeda caught up with Gujarat Acers owner Manish Vij in an exclusive chat about his team, the Poker League and much more. Here are a few excerpts from the interview:
The Indian Gaming Federation announced that they are working to legalize poker in the country and said that it could be 5-6 months away. On the other hand, the Sports Authority of India says that it could be a matter of years before poker is legalized in the country. What do you think of this considering you’ve chosen to invest in the game and what do you think the future holds for the game in the country?
We were introduced to poker only a couple of years ago and feel that the popularity of the sport has grown faster than what we thought was possible. We tried to get into this fast-growing game at an early stage as is our (SMILE Group) strategy. We believe that over the next five years, there is a potential for the sport to become pretty big and so we decided to get involved with it.
What do you think the sport can do to become more popular with the masses? Taking the example of sports like badminton and cricket, which have shortened their formats to become more appealing to the public, do you think poker should go down that road as well?
There are already different formats in poker, there was the Texas Hold’em format, and now the Omaha heads-up format is catching up. So while cricket and badminton have shortened formats, there are already five formats present in the sport of poker.
I do not think a larger number of formats are required. But I do feel we need to congratulate the organizers for creating a team event format for the league which is a first of its kind event in the world. Nowhere in the world does such a format exist and these guys have done a great job in making this event a success. It’s an evolving sport and will continue to be so.
How involved are you in the process of selecting the team and its operation?
Most of the preparation work in terms of the team was done by our partner Mukesh. The team mentor Sumit Asrani also played an important role in going through the mathematics and analytics of each player to pick and choose who would be the best for the team.
The two played a major role in the team and the results are now showing. There were two parts to the event, the corporate part and also the on-the-table poker playing one. Asrani and his team not only held practice sessions, boot camps and strategy meetings, but also helped in the branding, marketing and media interaction of the team.
He ensured that the team stayed together in order to do well. What is essential is to have fun at the end of the day while indulging your passions and Mukesh and his team are doing exactly that.
Mukesh told us that the Gujarat franchise was not your first choice. Is there any particular reason why you ended up choosing Gujarat?
The Kolkata and Delhi franchises were taken and so we decided on Gujarat. Gujarat is doing well in all sectors of business. Moreover, our Prime Minister is from Gujarat so it was a no-brainer in the end.
Do you play poker yourself and from that perspective, what do you think of the fact that only three states in the country have legal poker rooms? Also, considering you have purchased the Gujarat franchise and with the state leading the country in the process of industrialisation and business, do you think that it should also legalise the sport?
In my view, all states should take this step. If the sport is so popular that it is played in every state, there should be a positive, official outlook towards it. I can’t comment on the policies of every state, but in my view, if things are looking so bright for the sport, then one should have a positive outlook on it.
At the end of the day, what is your long term target with the Gujarat Acers? Mukesh spoke about creating a forum from where Indian players could appear in the World Series of Poker (WSOP). Since you are handling the marketing activities, what exactly is your goal with the franchise?
There is a microscopic and telescopic goal. What Mukesh spoke of was the telescopic goal that we want our team to achieve. Our microscopic goal, however, is to win this tournament for starters or at least be among the top two for sure. That's the current short term goal.
In India, poker is not yet accepted as a sport, especially due to the social angle where it is often termed as a social “illness”? What is your take on this issue?
I believe poker is a sport and very much a game of skill. Any game has an element of luck involved which is then overcome or capitalised on by a player’s skill. Even poker is a similar combination of skill and luck.
I would say that a lot of education about the game in the form of tournaments will help the game develop into a sport. Legalising the sport for starters will also help. In my journalistic view, legalising things always helps. If things run under the radar, it will help nobody. If things are done in a format which is legal and accepted by the government, it will also be accepted by society. Legalising always helps
As a collective, will Gujarat Acers be pushing towards that goal too?
As a team, I do not think we will be pushing towards that goal. It is the PSL and poker community in the country who have to work towards it. The Gujarat Acers are a very small part of the community and the entire community needs to work towards that singular goal.
