A Poker Life -- Raj VohraVohra Makes The Switch From Professional Tennis Player To Professional Poker Player |
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Raj Vohra is a winner. He always has been. Growing up in India, Vohra was among the top tennis players in the country. After school, he turned pro and began competing on the ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) Tour.
Vohra was living his dream, competing with the best players in the world as the pride of his nation, but disaster struck and an injury forced him into early retirement. Not one to be down for long, Vohra picked himself back up and started from scratch, learning poker through trial and error after catching an episode of the World Series of Poker on ESPN.
Five years of intense study later and the 36-year-old has become one of the best players you’ve never heard of. This is his story.
Volleying For a Career in Tennis
Vohra was born in India in 1974 to a family who made their living managing various clothing factories. His mother and father were a hard-working couple who pressed to instill that same work ethic in Raj and two siblings. Though he had many interests as a child, it wasn’t until he was eight years old that he discovered his passion for the game of tennis.
“I was always very competitive,” Vohra recalled. “Even as a beginner, I was challenging myself to play kids who had been playing for three or four years. Within a few months, it was clear that I had found something special. The game came very naturally to me, not only athletically, but also the mental side of the game that takes other players years to develop.”
Sensing the opportunity for a free education, Vohra’s parents encouraged him to keep at it and before long, he was one of the top junior players in the country. “I’ve always had this drive to be a winner, to be the best. I started off trying to be the best in my town and once I accomplished that, I tried to be the best in my state. Once I succeeded in that, the goal was to be the best in my nation. For many years, I was ranked within the top five players in my age group in all of India.”
Part of what made Vohra so successful was his relentless ability to attack, no matter what the game situation. Whether he was serving 40-Love or down a break, he always went for the kill. He would rather go down in flames than ever play it conservative.
“My game was all about aggression,” he said. “I was more of a net player, not a baseline player. I never wanted to sit back and wait for things to come to me. I made sure that everyday I went out and got it for myself.”
With his school expenses taken care of, Vohra worked to get a bachelor’s degree in accounting, just in case his pro career didn’t pan out like he imagined. Little did he know how quickly he would need it.
A Bad Beat on the Court
Vohra left school and immediately joined the ATP Tour, competing at European stops and other events all over the globe. “I spent about three years traveling the tour before I decided to move to the United States. It was there that I broke my wrist on the court.”
Though hopes were high for a return, it became apparent that Vohra’s dream was over. To add insult to injury, all of his supporters moved on, leaving him alone to fend for himself. “The first three months after my injury was one of the hardest times in my life,” he remembered. “Not only could I not play any tennis, but then my sponsors started dropping out one by one. My whole life, tennis had provided for me, but now that it was over, I realized that I needed to find something else.”
While finishing out his recovery, Vohra took a job as an accountant, but his love for tennis was too strong to stay away from the game entirely. “My short-lived career as a professional tennis player was over, but I figured that if I couldn’t hit for power, I could certainly teach others how to do it. That’s when I became a tennis instructor. I did that for about four or five years, but I couldn’t sit still. I started day trading and then I opened up my own real estate company. I had found financial success, but I was missing that competition that I loved so much.”
Rallying For a Career in Poker
Vohra was yearning for some competition and he found it in an unlikely game of cards while channel surfing for some tennis updates on TV. “Poker might as well not even exist in India. Nobody I knew had played the game and I had no idea what it was even about. Being the sports junkie that I was, I always had ESPN on in the background. One day I noticed they were showing the World Series of Poker and that Joe Hachem was winning millions of dollars. Of course, I was intrigued and started watching more and more of the reruns. It occurred to me that this could be a competitive outlet for me.”
Though he had found a new hobby, Vohra was about as green as you could get entering his first experience with the game. “I remember my first trip to the casino,” he said. “I had to print out the hand rankings just so I knew what hand beat what. I studied on the drive over and even some at the table, but I still lost $100 playing $1-$2 limit hold’em. It didn’t matter. I was hooked. It took many trips, but I eventually started to win, especially when I switched to the single-table sit-and-gos.”
“Within six months, I was one of the regulars and had done pretty well, winning a few thousand here and there in some of the multi-table tournaments they offered. Then I overheard some guy talking about how he won $50,000 on PartyPoker. I had no idea what PartyPoker was, but I searched for it that night when I got home and soon discovered online poker.”
Just like tennis all those years ago, poker was coming very naturally to Vohra. With a couple hundred dollars invested online, Vohra quickly worked his bankroll up to $40,000 playing a mixture of limit hold’em and tournaments. When PartyPoker shut its doors to the U.S. market, Vohra moved to PokerStars and Full Tilt. Within weeks, he had chopped up the Sunday Million to go along with various other tournament scores. With a surging bankroll, Vohra headed to Las Vegas for his first attempt at the WSOP.
“I played four or five events in the summer of 2008. I cashed in a couple, but nothing too big. I was about to go home when I decided to try and satellite into the $5,000 event. I won and extended my trip, which proved to be very profitable when I made the final table and busted in fifth place for almost $200,000.”
Vohra Serves Up an Ace For Big Online Tournaments
Vohra has over $2.5 million in tournament earnings, nearly half of which has come this year online. Amazingly, his biggest score, a $430,000 win in the two-day $2,500 Full Tilt Online Poker Series XV event, almost didn’t happen. “I was all set to fly to Las Vegas for the North American Poker Tour main event at the Venetian, but at the last second, my family decided they were coming to visit and I was forced to cancel my trip. I was upset at the time, but all that changed the next day after I had locked up the win and $430,000. More importantly, I really started to believe in myself. It was a big confidence builder.”
That confidence led to more and more victories. Vohra’s online tournament resume is practically a list of prestigious tournament wins including a Spring Championship of Online Poker title, the Sunday 500, the Nightly Hundred Grand, and the Super Tuesday. In September, he narrowly missed adding a World Championship of Online Poker, bracelet to his list of accomplishments when he fell in second place to two-time winner Jamie “Xaston” Kaplan. Nonetheless, it was his fourth six-figure score of the year.
When asked to pinpoint the reason for his success, Vohra thought back to his own personal “aha” moment. “The major turning point for me was when I learned more about pot control and position,” he explained. “I’ve always been aggressive, four-betting and five-betting with nothing, but now I’m much more in control and I think I have a great feel for my opponents and when they will fold to pressure. My motto when I play cards is to always be aggressive. Just like in tennis, there are a lot of unforced errors in poker. But that was never my style, to sit back and wait for chips to fall in my lap. I make sure that I go out there and force my opponents into making mistakes.”
Vohra’s beginning of the year success put him into contention for Card Player’s Online Player of the Year award, but when the laws changed in Florida allowing big bet no-limit hold’em, he quickly shifted his focus away from online play to the live arena and the ever-growing cash game scene.
From Tournaments To Cash Games
“For awhile, the games were great,” Vohra remembered. “It definitely hurt my chances to win the OPOY award, but I couldn’t pass up all that action. The games have slowed down a bit, but I think they’ll pick up again once the big tournaments come to town.”
The big tournaments Vohra refers to include World Poker Tour and World Series of Poker Circuit stops and for the time being, he’s happy he has the flexibility and skill to compete wherever the action is. That being said, Vohra intends to use the holiday season to improve upon his current 11th-place OPOY ranking.
“This December will be all online, all the time,” he said. “I’m going to need to win something big, but I think I can make that final push towards the top.” With an intense drive to succeed and a passion for winning, who would bet against him?
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