A Long Island college student majoring in finance has moved to the head of the class after winning more than half a million dollars at a World Series of Poker event in Las Vegas.
First-time competitor Shankar Pillai, 22, of Commack was one of more than 800 players who put up $3,000 to buy into the no-limit, Texas hold ’em poker event, a game in which there are face-up community cards for all players to use and face-down hold cards for each player.
“I’d never played in a World Series of Poker event. I wanted to give it a shot,” said Pillai, who won $527,829. “It was pretty intimidating. We played for 12 and 14 hours a day. [But] I would say I held my own.”
After three long days of play, Pillai was stunned to find himself in a final game.
It came down to Pillai, a Baruch College student who hopes to become a financial analyst, and one other person, a poker-faced pro. Their shared cards were 10, 8 and 2.
Pillai drew his own cards: an 8 and an ace – an unlucky “Dead Man’s Hand,” named for the hand “Wild Bill” Hickok was holding when he was shot in the back.
Pillai said he watched as his opponent, Beth Shak, looked at her cards and then “went all in,” shoving all of her remaining chips onto the table. Pillai had to call or fold.
“I thought about it for a few minutes,” Pillai said, before pushing all of his chips into the pot, too.
“She had a pair of eights, like me, and a king. I had eights and an ace. I was numb when I won, it all happened so fast. I couldn’t move.”
Pillai said he plans to buy a new car with some of the dough.
But like any good money manager, “I’m going to invest most of it,” Pillai said. “Poker is gambling, but I look at poker as a skill game. I wouldn’t compare it to the market. Poker is definitely more chance.”
Pillai said he started playing online poker on his home computer for small amounts of money when he was 15 years old.
“I make a lot of money online,” enough to pay tuition and bills and to put some into the bank, he said.
At first, he said, his parents had no clue he was a cyber card sharp, but that changed when checks started arriving at the family home with his name on them.
“They didn’t like it, but when they saw how much I was winning, they said it would be OK, as long as I stayed in school,” Pillai said.
“Now, after this, they don’t think it’s so bad,” he chuckled.