Devesh Thapar navigated his way through a field of 499 players at the Asian Poker Tour Main Event VND 6 Billion GTD Championship in Ho Chi Minh, making a deep run to finish in 13th place, taking home prize money of VND 115.41 Million (INR 3.40 Lac).
The total prize pool tallied VND 9.68 Billion (INR 2.87 Crores), making it the biggest poker tournament ever held in Vietnam. Thapar had company among his fellow countrymen as Ravi Priya and Sumit Sapra also entered the huge event, but only Thapar had a chip stack when Day 3 rolled around.
Among the Chip Leaders
It was quite a stack (547,000) at that, third largest among the 53 players that remained at the start of Day 3. Thapar was gunning for the first place prize of VND 1.63 Billion (INR 48.40 Lac) and the APT title, but that went to native son Dang Xuan Canh, who claimed his first international championship and the largest payday of his career.
Thapar entered on Day 1C and chipped up to bag and tag 105,100 in chips for Day 2 action, with 203 players still alive.
“I was among the top 10 stacks after Day 1C,” Thapar told reporters after hitting the rail. “In Day 2, I started good and finished among the top three stacks. This gave me a lot of confidence.”
Grinding for seven hours on Day 3, Thapar admitted that “things really didn’t go my way,” eroding some of the confidence he had gained after the first two days of action. His quest for a title came to an end when he shoved all-in with Q-J in the hole, but his opponent held pocket bullets and hit a set on the board.
Canh KO’s Le
Heads-up action for the championship saw Dang Xuan Canh battle Minh Le. Canh was second in chips with 2,490,000 when the final table was formed, while Le was the third shortest stack at 1,150,000. When Vu Duc Trung was sent to the rail in 3rd place, Canh held a 2.5-1 chip advantage over Le.
Canh decimated Le’s chip stack when his suited 6-3 caught a favorable flop of 6-6-J for trips. Le was holding pocket kings and watched helplessly as the board ran out without another king making an appearance. Minh was left with crumbs and was eliminated as runner-up on the very next hand, taking home a respectable prize of VND 1,636,720,000.
More Study and Work for Devesh Thapar
Good players learn from their experiences and mistakes, as well as devoting much of their time toward improving. Thapar falls into that category as he promised to put in the hours needed.
“I need to work hard on my game as I know where I was wrong,” he stated. “I learned a lot and wish to do much better next time, but I loved how I managed to grind for all this time and went deep again!”
