Muskan Sethi Helping to Grow Poker in India

Indian poker pro Muskan Sethi is part of a new generation of players who are helping to break traditionally stereotypes held about poker players on the sub-continent. The 27-year-old Delhi pro has always had a competitive streak in her, and at one stage wanted to become a tennis player, but as she recently explained in an interview with India Today:
“Poker is a dreamer’s sport. I could have chosen anything but poker chose me.”
Recounting her early experiences, Muskan Sethi said that she spent countless hours watching poker on TV alongside her father, and by the time she reached 20 she started playing the game on Facebook. That is when she first really started enjoying the challenges of playing poker, and as she explains:
“Everytime I sat to play poker, I would clean the table out. So I decided to take it up seriously and started entering tournaments online.”
Muskan said that she then won an all expensive paid trip to the 2014 EPT Barcelona championship via a PokerStars online freeroll, allowing her to take part in the PokerStars Shark Cage. While there, she also had the opportunity to play against some of the best players in the world, including her idol Phil Ivey and Live Boeree.
She has since gone on to win $86,622 playing online tournaments on PokerStars under the screen name Musku89, while in the live arena her biggest score came in 2014 after finishing the WSOP $1,500 No Limit Hold’em event in 55th place out of 2,396 players for a $7,827 payday.
Needless to say, her achievements and passion for poker has started to inspire many of her fellow countrymen and countrywomen to take up the game, and she is continuing to help grow the mind sport within the huge nation of 1.25 billion people. The importance of the Indian market cannot be overestimated, either, as its potential is currently seen as second only to China.