A week ago, Akash Hotwani felt almost snake bitten after firing multiple bullets in both the Almighty Winter Kickoff and the Super Deep 6-Max here at the 2026 Borgata Winter Poker Open. After coming up empty-handed, he made the long drive home to visit his wife and dog.
“No matter what I did, I busted out of every freaking tournament,” Hotwani said. “Everything I played was a disaster, and I went home in tears on Wednesday to go back to the office and take care of my dog, thinking I’m not coming back.”
The pep talk
That brief visit back home included a pep talk for extra movitation from his wife. Hotwani jumped into a satellite on Thursday on BetMGM and won his seat back into the Deepstack Main Event.
“I played the flight on Friday with my satellite entry, and it lasted ten minutes,” Hotwani said before making the point that if he were here, he might as well fire another bullet and see where things took him.
Where things took him was on a journey that we never could have imagined, only dreamed of, as over the next three days, Hotwani battled it out with 4,280 players enroute to his largest career score after taking down the Deepstack Main Event for $323,775 and his first career BetMGM trophy.
“I can’t even put it into words what I have done to be here,” Hotwani told PokerOrg. “Nobody is ever going to know, they are just gonna see the win, but it has been a year and a half of constant studying, work, and tournaments, burning my bankroll, literally spending my rent on tournaments.”
On a roll
A local tournament grinder around the Northeast, Hotwani is no stranger to winning a live tournament. He previously took down a $340 Nightly tournament at Parx Casino in Bensalem in October for his first HendonMob-recognized victory.
“October and November, I finished first and second in the span of three weeks, so that kind of boosted my confidence,” Hotwani said of his small but mighty wins. “However, it can’t be compared to something like this; they run for a couple of hours, and this is extensive work. Just imagine playing 12 hours every day and having to then reset for the next day with the same mindset.”
And reset Hotwani did, as the second bullet led to a top-five bag in Flight E and a top-three stack heading into Day 3. He would eventually come into the final table as one of the middle stacks before running away with the tournament.
The life changing score may mean a lot to Hotwani, but more importantly, it means he gets to continue doing what he loves, and that’s play tournament poker.
“(The win) validates me as a poker player,” Hotwani said. “Sometimes money just sits in your account, and you don’t even realize it because you are still just gonna play more tournaments, so I do feel happy, but I just want to play more tournaments. More importantly, I’ve never gotten a trophy in my life not even in (high) school, this is my first trophy, and that’s what makes me emotional.”
