Ajay Chabra Moves from Online Cash Games to Tournament Glory

By Matt Clark

The theme of this season’s WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic is relative unknowns making their first deep run in a World Poker Tour event. Ajay Chabra (pictured) is among that crowd as he composes his first live tournament splash. Outside of the Bellagio, he is known well on the online streets of New Jersey.

Playing under the username “TomBrady,” Chabra regularly plays the highest cash game stakes the New Jersey sites have to offer from his home in Hoboken.

Before poker became his full-time profession, Chabra was an engineer living in Boston who played poker on the side. The 29-year-old started playing online his senior year of college, prior to Black Friday.

“I started a little bit later than most people my age,” Chabra said. “I started around 2010-ish and was a recreational player at first but then I slowly got a little bit better. Then, Black Friday happened and I started to take it more seriously. I was an engineer for a couple years and sort of doing poker on the side and thinking in the back of my mind I could do it full time.”

When New Jersey regulated online poker in December 2013, Chabra was among those who moved to the state to play virtually. From there, “TomBrady” started sitting in cash games and before long, became a regular in the $25/$50 nosebleed games.

Chabra observed the games starting to dry up and chose to play more live poker in the recent months. Tournaments were a natural part of that switch and Chabra is showing well in his first career cash on the World Poker Tour.

“I think I just decided to play more live  lately,” Chabra told WPT.com. “Originally over the last few years, I was primarily an online cash game player. I’ve been playing a few more tournaments this year. Before this year, I never really played many tournaments and I guess I’m glad I did. It’s fun when you run like this.”

Indeed, Chabra has run well and hit a peak of card distribution earlier today when he eliminated Michael Ruane with aces over kings.

Now on the bubble of the televised WPT Five Diamond final table, Chabra’s play is fully recognized by those in the field. Chabra’s online reputation precedes him, but he is indifferent to whether it helps his game or not.

“I like it being a little bit anonymous. People see me and they might not know who I am. I think it’s nice and cool, but I’m not sure it gives a huge advantage,” Chabra observed. “If you play with someone you can tell pretty quickly if they know what they’re doing or if they don’t. I kind of like that I’m a little bit under the radar.”

With a large payday on the horizon, Chabra anticipates playing more tournaments in the future. Online poker in New Jersey awaits him regardless of his result, but we will see him again in live tournaments soon enough.

“I guess I wanted to try tournaments out a little bit,” Chabra said. “They seemed like fun. I got a little bit of the tourney bug, played a few, and wanted to make a deep run.”

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