India’s President, Ram Nath Kovind  will be honoring female poker pro Muskan Sethi sometime in November. She will be receiving this honor at a ceremony along with 99 other women who have been handpicked as special achievers for their accomplishments in various male-dominated fields.

Sethi Recognized ForBeing Pioneering Female Poker Pro

Muskan Sethi will be honored for being India’s first woman to play professional poker along with other achievers which include the first female cadet to join Indian Army, India’s first woman firefighter and first Indian woman to reach Antarctica.At a time when India has emerged as one of the fastest growing poker markets in the world, Sethi’s recognition by the President of India is only going to further boost the growth of poker in the country.

Sethi is a professional poker player from New Delhi who also spends her time as a social worker. She has amassed about $150,000 in lifetime tournament earnings in both online and live poker tournaments. Sethi who is now 28 yrs has been playing poker for the last seven years. The majority of Indian states forbid all forms of gambling and poker is still classified as gambling in India.

However things are slowly changing as poker lobbyists in the country and looking to educate legislators that poker is a game of skill and not chance. A number of states are currently debating the possibility of legalizing poker on the basis that it is a game of skill, similar to chess.

Sethi Breaks The Mold

There are very few professional female poker players in India as most Indian parents do not want their children to select gambling as a full time career. Sethi was drawn towards poker because her dad used to watch the World Poker Tour (WPT) on television and she took a liking to the game. She says that she was fascinated watches the likes of Daniel Negreanu and Phil Ivey compete on television and she started playing Zynga Poker on Facebook as she wasn’t aware that there were real money online poker sites out there that would allow her to make her living online.

She got her breakthrough at the age of 25 when she won a free deposit ticket and took part in a PokerStars SharkCage qualifier and ended up on a TV show playing against some of the top poker players in the world who were competing for $1 million in prize money. She hasn’t looked back since and her family has supported her choice of being a full time poker player.

Sethi states that it is hard to estimate how many active poker players there are in India but believes the number will be over 100,000. She expects this number to grow rapidly with the launch of three poker leagues in the country and WPT India scheduled to take place for the first time. Sethi said that cash games are played all over the country but as of now she prefers to play poker tournaments which usually take place once a month in India.

Tags: female poker players, India, live poker, Muskan Sethi, Online Poker, PokerStars, Zynga Poker

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 1st, 2017 at 2:21 am and is filed under Interviews, Poker Industry News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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