Mukul Pahuja chooses poker as a career

How he left the grind of Wall Street for the felt of the poker table

Mukul Pahuja once worked on Wall Street but decided to make a career change and follow in his brother Vinny’s footsteps to become a professional poker player. Sitting as the leader in the World Poker Tour Player of the Year race, according to Poker News, Pahuja has recorded more than $2.1 million in live tournament winnings in just three years. Pahjua moved from New York to his new home in Florida and soon after making the move Pahuja got the biggest score of his entire career when he finished third at the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open in which he took home $872,625. He wasn’t done there though and three months after that finish he again was in the top three taking the runner-up position at WPT Montreal, nabbing $362,430. He has also started 2014 strong and landed a fourth place finish at WPT Bay 101 Shooting Stars as well as eighth place at WPT Lucky Hearts Poker Open.

There are many tough players still in contention for the spot of Player of the Year and the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open $10 Million Guarantee was nearly a World Poker Tour sponsored event. There was a WPT Alpha8 held on the property during that tournament and the event hosted a $5 million guarantee at the event. If the $10 million guarantee was a WPT sponsored event, Pahuja would have held the most Player of the Year points in WPT history at 3,350 which would have smashed the current record of 2,575 that Matt Salsberg achieved in Season XI. Pahuja also has been ranking in the 2014 Global Poker Index Player of the Year race after his hot start in 2014 and he’s not complaining. He is content with being a newlywed to his new wife Alexis though and stated, “I’m ecstatic about the life we built for ourselves.”