This Illegal Poker Club in Delhi Has 50K Chips and a Pot Over a Crore

All eyes were on Vineet. An hour in, he’d already made eight lakhs. And it showed. Cockiness oozed from the bespectacled 35-year-old IT professional as he slid Rs. 30,000 in chips across the table, his eyes rarely leaving the Amit Bhadana song streaming off his phone.

“Let me see what I have”, he asked out loud, showing me his hand. None of it made sense. But then again, Uno is more my speed and unless someone threw a Draw 4, I doubt I could muster up the required awe.

Five of the players at the table had long since folded. The remaining two weren’t a match for his pair of jacks. Vineet had just won 1.2 lakhs in under a minute. More than a month’s salary for a lot of people. But for an elite illegal poker club in South Delhi, this was loose change.

“It’s their kingdom, not mine”, Saurabh* told me. The kingdom he referred to was an upscale 3BHK in South Delhi. There was expensive furniture but it was weary from prolonged usage. There were some generic paintings on the wall and a giant LED with the stock market updates.

Saurabh’s group consists of businessmen, builders, investors, retired government servants, IT professionals and anyone else with deep pockets. Some of the biggest industrialists have played through here he told me, “The kind whose wealth has no end.” The day before had seen the biggest pot ever, with the winner walking away with Rs. 1.2 crores. Saurabh has arranged games across Hauz Khas, Lajpat Nagar, Greater Kailash and suburbs of Gurgaon and Noida.

A software developer, he left his job and got into the gambling industry in 2010, when a friend had taken him to a backroom game in Lajpat Nagar. Everyone had chipped in Rs. 200 to cover the rent. “I offered to organise a match in my Gurgaon office the next time.” Over the next few years, he found organising poker games more lucrative than his day job.

Saurabh earns anywhere between Rs. 10 to 20 lakhs a month through rake. The rakes collected can go upto Rs. 1 crore per year, but bad debts and and “miserly defaulters” diminish his earnings to 10-20 percent of that. “There are both kind of people: the ones who return the money and the ones who don’t. The rake covers these losses, but if often goes from my pocket.”

The longest game they ever had went on for four days. Players slept in adjoining rooms as the game continued. “The poker community is crazy” said Saurabh. A fraction of the money won is handed over, the rest balances the player’s debts. Looking around, I asked if women ever played here. He claimed that the wives and girlfriends of some of the men would occasionally swing by. Sourabh fondly remembered a woman who used to play that was really pretty.

Two cooks, a full-time dealer and two errand boys keep the guests constantly supplied with tea, soup, omelettes, cigarettes and alcohol. As the game progressed, pasta, soya chaap and chicken, Coke, Malana cream joints and coffee were served.

“They start coming at 3-4 in the afternoon and end up staying till late at night, often spilling to next day. I clean up and make sure they get whatever they want,” an errand boy explained. He earns Rs. 15,000 a month, but is now an expert at shuffling and dealing cards.

One of the men at the table, Vishal, was holding court. He described a sex party he had been to. A group of 20 women titillating the men, watched over by two black bouncers. “The catch is you are not allowed to fuck them. They will just tease you. When your dick gets hard, [the bouncers] pour cold water on it.”

Saurabh offered me a few chips to try my luck, but as I explained to my editors, “mere aukaat se bilkul bahaar tha.” (Totally above my level.)

The conversation drifted from the water shortage in Rajasthan, to the viral video of the dancing uncle, the share prices of RLB Bank, the price of good cocaine in Delhi, Sanju, to the Modi government.

Around 7 PM, a man into his 50s rose up from the table and asked for a checkout. Amid murmurs of protests, he left the club Rs. 3.57 lakh richer after three hours of play.

There was a small break. Some players assembled in adjoining room for to congratulate or berate each other. Another player, with a tilak on his forehead, told me he doesn’t care what the society thinks of gambling. “I feel it’s a bad habit, but fun. I don’t tell my relatives that I play poker.” Amid the confessions, Saurabh, who was on a losing streak, bet Vineet that he would do 50 push-ups for Rs. 6,000 worth of chips.

Vineet looks at the game like an addiction, but also as a social exercise which has helped build him business connections. “A man would spend 5-6 lakhs here, but would think twice about spending a penny outside” He feels guilty about spending time here and not with his family, but plans to correct that.

“Bade madarchod hote hain policewale. But they can’t stop it. We would just play somewhere else.”

Narendra, who is 50, sees this gathering as a place free of poor people. “Delhi’s poker scene is very elite. You wouldn’t find lower class people, which is kind of a good thing. At the end of the day, it’s just about money.”

As the game continued till midnight, fortunes reversed. The relatively new Rajeev had shaken the table for close to Rs. 2 lakhs. Vineet owed around four and a half lakhs and Saurabh had almost Rs. 5.2 lakhs in front of him.

Saurabh wants gambling to be legalised so that he doesn’t have to pay the cops a lakh and a half every month. “Bade madarchod hote hain policewale. But they can’t stop it. We would just play somewhere else. These players need their daily dose of adrenaline rush. Don’t think of it as a drug. It’s a passion.”

*Some sources used pseudonyms, others only provided first names.

Follow Zeyad Masroor Khan on Twitter.