Hailing from Kolkata, West Bengal, Aditya “Intervention” Agarwal is the first PokerStars pro player for India. He was introduced to the game while studying at Drexel University in the U.S. and quickly became a globally recognized competitor after graduation. His lifetime earnings place him fourth on India’s all-time money list, and he’s been a constant presence at both live and online tournaments across the world for 12 years now. His steady success over the past decade and beyond makes him the perfect ambassador to bring the professional sport of poker to India on a larger scale.
Despite spending his formative years first in an exclusive boarding school up in Darjeeling, then at Drexel in Philadelphia, Agarwal now calls West Bengal’s capital city home again. He has spoken about his excitement of the idea of poker becoming a recognized professional sport in India and how the arrival of PokerStars India will support this. Agarwal has also expressed confidence in the pool of poker-playing talent already in Kolkata, assuring the world that there are many great players there waiting for a bigger stage. In fact, he introduced his wife, Shuchi Chamaria, to the game, and now she is a pro player who travels with him.
You will find Agarwal playing online under the name “Adi Agarwal,” but he also has spent this last summer on a whirlwind tour of live tournaments across the U.S. He then spent three months in his favorite live poker location of Las Vegas with his wife before moving on to Florida and New Jersey. After America, they moved on to the Macau Poker Cup, so the pro couple spent a long time on the road in 2017. Although Agarwal enjoys the global poker circuit, he is passionate about establishing the sport back in his home country.
As such a visible and successful player, Agarwal presents the perfect figure to act as a mentor to the next generation of Indian poker players. In his role as a PokerStars pro player, he is primed and ready to lead the imminent PokerStars India launch sometime soon. He has previously spoken of his anticipation for this development and details what a positive impact it is bound to have on the position of poker in India. With the potential of a PokerStars site specifically for Indian players on the horizon, the Indian poker scene can look forward to welcoming the biggest live and online tournaments around.
Agarwal is confident that there is a positive movement toward making professional poker a sport in India now, with plans afoot to increase the scale of the sport and make it massive across the country. Only time will tell how the sport will develop, but the existing players are eager to establish it on a large scale and as a professional sport. The goal is to put poker tournaments on television, upgrade poker rooms in major cities and introduce the sport to the mainstream.