June 17, 2017 (Las Vegas, NV) - It took an extra day of play to end the $2,500 No-Limit Hold'em, but Gaurav Raina is no stranger to taking some extra rest. The 33-year-old took two months off from playing poker, dedicating his time to just studying the game, before the 2017 World Series of Poker and it worked out beautifully for him on Sunday afternoon.
Raina came back for an extra unscheduled day of action to finish his heads-up match with James Calvo. After nearly two hours of back-and-forth heads-up play, Raina flopped a set of jacks against Calvo's top pair to emerge victorious. He bested a field of 1,086 players to win $456,822 and his first career bracelet in just his fourth cash in a WSOP event.
"I was very fortunate to get all the hands and win all the flips," said Raina after his win. "To make it heads-up when I was severely chip disadvantaged almost the whole final table, when the bracelet plopped in between us, I was like 'Oh man. I can't even look at this thing. If I look at it, the worse it's going to be for me when I don't get it.' So, I just decided to just not even give it any attention at all and just play the game as best I can."
Raina is a professional poker player that is originally from New Jersey, but moved to Athens, Georgia with his girlfriend while she went to school for her graduate degree. He was primarily a cash game player, but after watching several of his friends have success in the tournament world, he decided he was going to shift his focus.
"I've always been a cash player and I've done well at that," said Raina. "I was never really into tournaments and the more I saw my friends succeed at it and the more I talked strategy and what not to try and learn more myself, the more I realized that there is so much more potential to win like silly amounts of money in just a few days of playing."
The months leading up to a summer packed full of poker at the Rio, he put more effort into studying tournaments than he ever did previously. It's worked out so far and he plans on more success in the future.
"I decided I would try and do everything that I could, while kind of taking a break from cash," he said. "Kind of just relaxing and studying tournament poker until coming here for the WSOP events. Hopefully, it's going to continue to pay off."
With a huge score under his belt after just a couple months of serious studying, Raina plans on becoming mostly a tournament grinder and shy away from cash games.
"Hopefully, I'll be transitioning into playing tournaments as long as I continue to better myself as a player," said Raina. "I'll have an opportunity to make a lot more money a lot faster."
Aside from the transition in his poker game, Raina is making a transition in his personal life. His girlfriend is finishing up school and at the end of the WSOP, he's going to head back east to pack up the rest of belongings and move to San Diego with her.
There was some talk about lining up a place to live before they got out there, but with a little bit of optimism from Raina and the ability to stay with her father for a little while, they were able to wait and will be getting a nicer place with the extra money in their pocket.
"Her father lives there, so we are just going to be staying at the house until we find an apartment," said Raina. "But I was like 'Let's not sign a lease yet because if things go well over the summer, we might be able to get a nicer place.' Fortunately, that's the case for me at this point."
The final scheduled day of action on Saturday came back with 30 players with a few well-established pros in the field. Eddy Sabat held a massive chip lead at the outset of the day, but when the final table was reached about four hours later, it was bracelet winner Asi Moshe who held the most chips of anybody left.
Moshe did most of the damage through the first half of the final table. He eliminated Giuseppe Pantaleo in eighth place, Griffin Abel in sixth place and Eric Cloutier in fifth place. Scott Margeson was eliminated in ninth place and Henric Stenholm hit the rail in seventh.
For the most part, Raina was able to just stay out of the way and let other players get eliminated and then took his chances during short-handed play.
"[The final table] was loaded with some good players and a few loose cannons," said Raina. "Everybody just played their game and fortunately for me, everybody got lots of hands to kill each other with and I just kind of sat there in the midst of the crossfire. I found myself just laddering up payjumps and all of a sudden, I'm heads-up. I don't even know how it happened, but there it was."
With four players left Moshe held more than half of the chips in play, but after Sabat was eliminated in fourth place, Moshe ended up playing a monster pot against Calvo, with his in bad shape against Calvo's . Moshe came out on the wrong end of that hand and in the blink of an eye, Moshe was left very short and Calvo had most of the chips in play. Moshe was eliminated in third shortly after.
That left Calvo holding the chip lead heads-up against Raina, but the heads-up battle lasted for several levels with the chip lead changing hands multiple times. Eventually, Raina and and Calvo hit the hard stop and they bagged up the final two stacks before returning on Sunday at 1 p.m. to play down to a winner.
Calvo bagged up the chip lead, but Raina scored an early double up on the extra day of action. They battled back and forth for about two hours before Raina took the chip lead and eventually the title. Raina's full house bested Calvo's top pair to secure the bracelet for the New Jersey native.
The tournament win isn't going to change his original plans for the summer. He's not going to jump into any super high rollers or anything crazy. He's going to continue to play events that he thinks he will be profitable in.
That doesn't mean he'll be taking time off, though.
"Tomorrow, I'll be back for the $1K bracelet event and I haven't really looked at the schedule for the last few days," said Raina. "But whatever is available for me to play, I will be playing. I'm not really going to pass up on anything unless I have a really good reason to. I came here to play day in and day out. I took two months off from playing before coming here just because I knew I would be grinding the entire time."
Full Results
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Final Table Results:
1st: Guarav Raina - $456,822
2nd: James Calvo - $282,276
3rd: Asi Moshe - $199,718
4th: Eddy Sabat - $143,148
5th: Eric Cloutier - $103,957
6th: Griffin Abel - $76,506
7th: Henric Stenholm - $57,068
8th: Giuseppe Pantaleo - $43,154
9th: Scott Margereson - $33,087