Poker Stories Podcast With Ankush Mandavia

Poker Stories is a long-form audio series that features casual interviews with some of the game’s best players and personalities. Each episode highlights a well-known member of the poker world and dives deep into their favorite tales both on and off the felt.

Age: 31
From: Detroit, Michigan
Turned Pro: 2010
Live Tournament Earnings: $4.5 million
Biggest Score: 3rd Place – 2016 $100,000 PCA Super High Roller — $787,640

The Highlights

On how he built his online bankroll…

“I was a crazy gambler [at the beginning]. I had it in me. I ran up big rolls and would lose them all. I started out playing ring games, 25¢-50¢. I was playing $25-$50 like a month into it. I would four-table people like ElkY (Bertrand Grospellier) and ADZ (Matt Marafioti) and I would just lose it all to them, and then I would start back again. It was kind of rinse and repeat for a couple years until I finally decided that I was going to take it seriously.”

On the difference between playing low-stakes and high-stakes…

“I never equate the buy-in to how I’m going to play [a tournament]. Whether I’m playing a $25k, or a $100k, or even a $300k, it’s more about my opponents at the table. I never think, ‘Okay, this is a $100k tournament, so I have to do something different.’ If you do that, you won’t succeed, so you kind of have to play your game and make adjustments based on your opponents, not the buy-in. In a $1,000 event, you have to make adjustments to beat $1,000 players. In a $100k event, you are playing against the best players in the world.”

On the biggest pot he ever lost…

“I lost an $80k pot once. I think that’s the biggest one. It was online, playing $200-$400 on Full Tilt. It may, or may not have been for all the money I had at the time. (laughing) I was playing heads-up, versus the best heads-up player at the time. I flopped a set on a 6-3-2 board. I had called a four-bet preflop, because I never folded to four-bets back then. Got it in versus aces and he ran out a running flush.”

You can check out the entirety of the interview in the audio player at the top of the page or download it directly to play on the go from iTunes or your favorite podcast app.

Catch up on past episodes featuring Daniel Negreanu, Nick Schulman, Barry Greenstein, Chris Moorman, Bryn Kenney, Mike Sexton, Brian Rast, Scott Seiver, Greg Raymer, Maria Ho and many more. If you like what you hear, be sure to subscribe to get the latest episodes automatically when they are released.