Meet Bhushan Sohani - Grindhouse 3

Over the upcoming weeks we will introduce the Grindhouse 3 participants to the public. After introducing Pokercode community coach Grzegorgz Kozieja, we travel to India as the high-flying Bhushan Sohani makes his way to Austria to join Kozieja in the Alps for Grindhouse 3.

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Some people dream of quitting their day job to pursue their true passion, but for Bhushan Sohani from India it didn’t just stop at dreaming. After a career in mechanical engineering he pursued a career in paragliding. But despite having over 119 hours of flying time and having done over 160 flights from 2017 to 2020, he had to park his dream when the covid pandemic hit. It’s at that point he found his passion for poker through mindset.

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Pokercode Milko: Hey Bhushan, pleasure to meet you. It’s amazing to have someone from India in the house. What is your background?‍

Bhushan: I started out as a mechanical engineer. I worked for about 12 years in the industry for companies like Siemens. I ultimately decided to quit my job to pursue a career in paragliding. When that finally got a little bit of traction covid came around and I couldn’t continue with that. I did, however, get my P3 license which means I am an independent pilot.

I came across poker during lockdown when I saw it on TV. I liked to watch it, but I never got into the game. I found some similarities in the mental game of paragliding. It’s actually super important. Bad decisions during a flight can end up in crazy injuries, or being lost in the valley and having to walk for 3 days to civilization. Sometimes it can even result in death if you make mistakes. 

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Okay, so your mindset must be pretty good already. But how did that translate when you got into poker? 

So yeah, my journey with poker started with mindset. I delved into how much more of a mind sport poker is. I listened to a few podcasts about poker and I started to understand the game a little bit more. I thought I could start with free rolls. My life roll was meant for paragliding, that was my main plan. So I didn’t want to touch that money. 

I learned how to play through free content on the internet. I tried to maximize the value I could get. I was able to build a small bankroll, about 10k rupees (±€120). I was playing 10 rupee tournaments (±€0.12). I had all the time in the world to do it and I was enjoying learning about the game. I also knew that this was a new sport. The level in India is much lower than what I watched on YouTube. I found some opportunities with streaming after and from that moment onwards I invested some money in studying and immediately I realized I needed to commit a lot more time to it. 

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So you were streaming right from the start, when you were trying to figure out how to beat the game playing micro stakes and low stakes? Why did you start creating content?

I thought it was fun to make some content out of my growth process. I had visualized pretty well how my route was going to be. I kept on studying and kept on playing. I started to play 400 rupee tournaments (±€5), then it was a long time of no improvement.

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When covid restrictions were lifted I went for 6 months of paragliding again, because that was still my main goal. We were doing some trial runs, but ultimately we couldn't go flying again and I had to go back home. That’s when I started working on poker again. This was July/august 2021. Since then I’ve been contemplating taking poker a lot more seriously. By the end of 2021 I was fortunate to get a few results. I’m self aware of my skill level, and these scores were some outliers, but I felt this was a great opportunity to invest heavily into learning and studying. I also invested in some streaming equipment. Good light, good camera. The past 6 months I’ve been fortunate enough to represent a poker site in India. 

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Okay so fast forward to now. You’ve been playing for another eight months since those scores and we announced Grindhouse 3. What was your motivation to apply?

I love to be together with many people who are positive about learning something like poker. The goal to become the best is what everyone in the house wants to achieve. To be able to do it all together guided by arguably the best in the world in their respective field is amazing. To have access to Fedor Holz, but also speak to Elliot Roe, I feel like I couldn’t ask for a better event to be a part of. It’s not only about learning from the best, but when all of these different elements come together the collective value is unmatched. The sheer EV in poker language of being in that room in presence of so much raw potential & so much of realized talent - will collectively easily be through the roof! 

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