Mid-Stakes to High Rollers, Doesn't Matter for Mandavia

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Ankush Mandavia may be a Super High Roller Bowl rookie but he’ll also enter this summer’s event with one of the field’s most complete tournament resumes. Mandavia has experienced success at nearly every level of the poker heirachy and is coming off a banner year that saw him earn nearly $2,400,000, win his first World Series of Poker bracelet and announce himself as someone who can consistently compete at the Super High Roller level.    

While a majority of the 56 player Super High Roller Bowl field are strictly High Rollers, Mandavia is the exception to the rule. In the last four months, dating back to December of last year, Mandavia has cashed in events ranging from $600 to $100,000 buy-ins. He won a $25,000 High Roller at the WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic and then picked up a win last month in a $600 bounty event at Venetian’s DeepStack Extravaganza.

“I definitely want to be successful across all formats and all tournament buy-ins.” Mandavia said, adding, “I just try to play whatever is running but I also like to challenge myself in High Rollers as well.”

The challenge will certainly be there this summer, as the Super High Roller Bowl will be the biggest event of Mandavia’s career.

“The Super High Roller Bowl is going to be the biggest event I’ve ever played and I’m really excited,” Mandavia said on an ARIA $25K High Roller break. “The fact that I got lucky enough to be in through the lottery makes it the opportunity of the year and I’m going to try to play my best.”

Even though he’s had success across the board, Mandavia seems to bring out his best in the biggest events he plays. The Georgia native burst onto the High Roller scene at the end of 2015, with a 5^th place finish in the $100,000 WPT Alpha8 High Roller and then followed that up with a podium finish in the $100,000 Super High Roller at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure.

Some players in Mandavia’s position, playing the biggest tournament of their career, might be an intimidating prospect but Mandavia knows that regardless of the arena, it’s still just poker.

“It’s exciting. The buy-in is so big and there is a lot of media coverage and cool things around it but at the end of the day it’s still poker,” Mandavia said, before closing our conversation with a line so many will be saying to themselves before the year’s biggest event, “I’ll just try to play my game and see what happens.”