When last we left Amit Agarwal, the Day 2D player who spun up a stack before going AWOL from the 2026 WSOP Main Event, he had departed the Horseshoe Event Center midway through Level 6 with 240,000 chips to see his favorite movie, Obsession (for the second time during the Main Event).
We weren't even sure he'd be back, but after the movie, some limit hold‘em, and other excursions, Agarwal did return after the dinner break.
But after leaving at dinner on Day 1D and after just 45 minutes this morning, would he stay? We had to find out and tracked him down at his table.
'Just keep having fun'
What's it like to be the talk of the poker world right now?
I am? I didn’t mean to be. I didn’t want to be. I’m just enjoying myself, and I hope everyone’s having a good time. The WSOP makes the rules for the tournament, and I can’t play that long; I can’t last that long. I’m devising my own structure that makes sense for me to have fun – and I am.
One of your tweets said, ‘If I don’t amuse myself, who will? It is very important to be ridiculous.’ You played 45 minutes today and said, ‘All right, I’m good.’
Yeah, I don’t know how to make money playing poker. I’ve tried, and I don’t know how to do that. So I invest the money, buy these chips, and they become like video game chips. I play the video game, and I’m enjoying it, and then when I’m not having as much fun anymore, or I rack up some chips and I want to go do something else, I go do something else. And now I’m back to playing Pac-Man. I just have no expectations of making money playing poker. I just have fun with it.
What is it with the movie Obsession? Why do you love it so much?
Oh, it’s just great. It’s made by a kid who’s 26 years old and put out some YouTube shorts and got discovered. It had a $750,000 budget and grossed $400 million. It's a great movie. I love all the horror movies. The bar is The Shining. This ain’t The Shining, but it’s pretty damn good.”
So, how was $4/$8 Limit at South Point?
I learned a new game! I knew the basic idea of limit, but I’d never played it, mostly because where I come from, the people that play limit are like 70-plus. But I tried it, and it was fascinating because you reach the river and you catch your flush or whatever, and you can’t get money out of it because you’re capped. That was my first time encountering that today. I made a flush on the river and the most I could bet was like 10% of the pot. It’s crazy.
Do you have a goal for the Main Event, or do you just want to have some fun?
Just keep having fun. The good thing about not playing that much is I’m not that invested. If I do bust out, it’s not like I wasted a lot of time playing poker. Three days of non-stop poker and then bust and go home with nothing? I’m definitely avoiding that.
Are you going to try to stick around for another four hours tonight?
No. If I hit 300K, I’m out. That’s the goal.
300K or bust…
Back in the field with about 200,000 chips and a lot more cameras trained on him, Amit played a hand that would have seen him hit his 300K goal. Would he drag the pot that would end his night?
Alas, after his bluff was called, our film-loving hero was left with just over 100,000 chips. His Main Event came to an end shortly afterwards.
Here's hoping we see him back next year. Perhaps the WSOP Main Event will be his next obsession?
