Online Rankings: Vaibhav Temani’s Hot Streak Propels Him to the Top of the Weekly and Monthly Leaderboards; Tarun Goyal Still Leads the POY Race by Miles

In this feature, we bring you to the top three weekly, monthly, and yearly performers every Sunday. These rankings are based on cumulative winnings (cashes). However, the rankings only include players registered to our online ranking system, so hurry up and register if you haven’t signed up on PokerGuru yet!

The Indian online poker scene is hotter than ever as we head into the final stretch of 2024! After a relatively quiet week, things are about to get crazy with Pocket52’s ₹2.50 Crores GTD Pocket Poker Championship and the largest-ever APT series, the APT Online 2024, making its grand debut on Natural8 India today. And let’s not forget the behemoth ₹35 Crores GTD WPT India Online Series coming up on PokerBaazi in December! With so much action and many opportunities to score big, the Player of the Year race is still wide open, even with just seven weeks left.

Tarun Goyal has been the breakout star of the year, achieving legendary status in just a few months, and he is still the one to beat in the Player of the Year race. From winning a WSOP bracelet to crushing the biggest tournament on Natural8 India, this former IT professional turned poker pro has rewritten the record books. He currently holds the top spot in the annual rankings, thanks in no small part to his incredible 10th-place finish in Natural8 India’s mega ₹10+ Lakhs buy-in GGMillion$ Main Event on Dhanteras. But he`s done a lot more, racking up a mind-blowing four eight-figure scores this year (all on Natural8 India), becoming the only Indian player ever to achieve this feat. He also topped both the winnings and profits leaderboards in August and September, a double whammy that no other player has managed in 2024. He even finished #3 on the October charts!

Goyal now boasts an unprecedented ₹7.01 Crores in annual winnings, with profits of ₹5.40 Crores. He’s the first player ever to break the ₹7 Crore mark in online MTT winnings in a single year, setting a new benchmark for Indian poker. He’s looking like a shoo-in to cap off his record-breaking year with the POY crown, currently holding a commanding ₹1.10 Crore lead over Neel Joshi, who had been dominating the POY race for over seven months. While Goyal has been relatively quiet over the past week, his lead is still substantial. However, the other contenders in the POY race are relentless crushers, and anything can happen, even with just a few weeks remaining.

Young Gun Neel Joshi, now ranked #2 in the POY race, cannot be written off the race yet. This PokerStars India Ambassador has had a phenomenal year himself, with ₹5.93 Crores in total winnings and ₹3.76 Crores in profit. Like Goyal, most of Joshi’s winnings (₹5.08 Crores) came from Natural8 India, including an incredible 15 seven-figure scores. While his intermittent play and extended breaks have seen him fly under the radar these past few weeks, his knack for racking up big scores makes him a serious contender till the end because, as we all know, “HiiiBarbie” can strike anytime!

If the top two POY contenders are all about skill and volume, Sanjay Chaudhary, currently ranked #3, represents India’s aspirational pool of players. This under-the-radar PokerBaazi player was down ₹30 Lakhs by the middle of October. But then, PokerBaazi’s G.O.A.T. 2024 happened, and once-in-a-lifetime lightning struck Chaudhary, who finished second in this monster event – the biggest online tournament to be hosted in India. He walked away with a mind-blowing ₹4.14 Crores after a heads-up deal with Kabir Chhatwal (₹3.11 Crores) – the biggest single online payout in Indian poker history! This incredible score launched him to #3 in the POY race, with ₹4.28 Crores in annual winnings and ₹4.09 Crores in profit.

Not long after Neel Joshi disappeared from the scene on Natural8 India, Anant Purohit started his rampage, and his phenomenal streak has propelled him to #4 in the POY rankings with ₹4.26 Crores in annual winnings and ₹3.11 Crores in profits. To put this in perspective, this poker veteran has raked in over ₹3 Crores in an insane 11-week spree on Natural8 India, boasting eight podium finishes and seven seven-figure scores. This week alone, he won an incredible ₹14.35 Lakhs, ranking fifth in the overall weekly standings. He also ranks second on the November leaderboard with a stunning ₹36.54 Lakhs in winnings (monthly profits ~ ₹29.23 Lakhs), thanks in large part to his second-place finish in the Bounty Hunters HR 525 for a whopping ₹21.23 Lakhs on the first Saturday of the month.

WSOP bracelet winner Aayush Arya has been pushed down to the #5 spot by Purohit’s incredible surge. However, this Young Gun has had a stellar year with ₹4.17 Crores in winnings and ₹2.59 Crores in profit. He’s been on a break recently, and the tension of maintaining his current spot keeps rising, with others in the tow looking to beach the top five of undeniably the most competitive online POY race ever.

The POY leaderboard is stacked with top players, including PokerGuru Staking coach Advait Rajguru (#6 with ₹3.94 Crores in winnings), Nishaanth Shanmughasundaram (#7 with ₹3.91 Crores), Satyam Verma (#8 with ₹3.59 Crores), G.O.A.T. 2024 champion Kabir Chhatwal (#9 with ₹3.50 Crores), and Neeraj Sattawat (#10 with ₹3.29 Crores).

We also have big names like Sashank Chakravarthy, Mohak Kapoor (the annual TLB (points) leaderboard topper), JaiKiran Kumar, Rajneesh Thakur, Rising Star Aman Parakh, Sagar Raj, three-time POY Young Gun Gaurav Sood, Young Gun Ashwin Vijay, Manish Lakhotia, and Vinay B, all fighting for the top spot.

With the POY race heating up, it’s Vaibhav Temani who currently sits atop the weekly and monthly leaderboards. His monthly tally boasts ₹46.01 Lakhs in winnings (monthly profits – ₹41.41 Lakhs), while his weekly haul totals ₹44.77 Lakhs (weekly profits – ₹40.30 Lakhs).

Temani, the online poker phenom from Jaipur, has been on fire on Natural8 India. He has already racked up an astonishing ₹47.50+ Lakhs in just ten days on the platform! His journey began with a stunning debut victory in the Bounty Warm Up 88. He then took home a jaw-dropping ₹23.44 Lakhs in the Sunday Bounty Forty Stack 44, followed by a runner-up finish in the Bounty Hunters Daily Main 54 on Wednesday for another ₹16.45 Lakhs. He followed that up with another win in the Bounty Hunters Special 54 for ₹3.57 Lakhs on Friday. This blazing streak is showing no signs of slowing down!

Sumit Sapra, a poker veteran with a track record of top finishes in some of the biggest tournaments, ranks #3 in the November standings and comes in at #2 for the week. His monthly haul boasts ₹24.73 Lakhs in cumulative winnings (monthly profits ~ ₹22.25 Lakhs), with an equally impressive ₹24.50 Lakhs this past week (weekly profits ~ ₹22.05 Lakhs). His most notable achievement was his breakout victory in Junglee Poker’s Grand Poker Party Main Event for ₹22.58 Lakhs.

Other notable players on the November leaderboard include Amar Iyer (#4 with ₹15.76 Lakhs in weekly winnings), Divik Arora (#4 with ₹15 Lakhs in monthly winnings), and the unstoppable Naveen Kumar S (#6 with ₹13.38 Lakhs in monthly winnings).

Amar Iyer, an online mid-stakes regular, took the #3 spot on this week’s leaderboard with a haul of ₹15.76 Lakhs. Iyer had a fantastic week, highlighted by his career-best score of ₹9.78 Lakhs from a fourth-place finish in Natural8 India’s Bounty Hunters Daily Main 54 and his second-best career score of ₹5.20 Lakhs in PokerBaazi’s The Big Show.

Other notable performers this week include Divik Arora (weekly winnings – ₹15 Lakhs), Anant Purohit (weekly winnings – ₹14.35 Lakhs), and NaveenKumar S (weekly winnings ~ ₹13.38 Lakhs).

Weekly Online Rankings (November 3 – November 9)

Monthly Online Rankings (November 1 – November 9)

Yearly Online Rankings (January 1 – November 9)

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