Two days shy of ten years ago Mukul Pahuja won the World Poker Tour’s Season XII Player of the Year and Monday he was still fighting with 35 players remaining in the $3,500 WPT Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown Championship.
Six months ago, Pahuja finished in seventh place at the WPT Prime Championship for his first six-figure WPT score in ten years. He still cashed 20 times in between those scores and has $2.1 million in WPT earnings.
Pahuja stayed busy as a dad the last few months. “I’ve been playing mostly locally in the Northeast,” he said. “I mostly play in Philly nowadays and I haven’t traveled since December. When I can stay home and play, it’s the best.”
When he won POY, he did it without etching his name on the WPT Mike Sexton Champions Cup. He finished runner-up twice, once in this event for $691,965, made three final tables, one eighth place finish and a deep run in the LAPC.
“I’m just as hungry to win one of these as I was ten years ago, because I still don’t have one,” Pahuja said. “I’m a dad now so my volume is a lot different than my 20s.”
“The long days are tougher on me now,” he said. “Honestly, I don’t know how much age plays into it when it comes to energy. For me, it’s more short-term kind of thinking: ‘Am I playing well through losing? Am I playing well through winning? (Am I) Even-keeled and not tilting?’ That’s what I focus on.”
Variance in tournaments is tough
Pahuja also doesn’t focus on six-figure windfalls. He finds it harder to go through downswings – an unfortunate reality all pros face. “It’s harder to go through a cold streak,” he said. “Everyone goes through long cold streaks and in MTTs that can be months or years – the variance is so high.”
“I don’t want to stress about when the next big one will come,” Pahuja added. “I know my volume is what it is, and my ROI is what it is. I try to make the most of my time by picking and choosing where and when to travel.”
The luxury of traveling to play poker isn’t lost on Pahuja. “During Covid everyone was the apps and random sites, so the poker demand was scattered all over the place. Since we came out of it, I’ve liked online poker better.”
Pahuja has come a long way in the 15 years plus he’s been playing – from a single guy in his 20s to a dad with salt peppering his beard. What would he tell his younger self if he could?
“Nothing,” he said. “Because it went pretty perfect. I lost some at the right time, I won some at the right time and learned some good lessons. I built a lot of my life around what happened 10-15 years ago, so I should probably just keep my mouth shut.”
All photos courtesy of WPT
