IITian who made $1 million playing poker says parents once struggled to explain his career

Nishant Kumar, an IIT Guwahati graduate, transitioned from corporate life to poker, winning over $1 million. He spoke to HT.com about his career trajectory

For most IIT graduates, a career in poker would be an unlikely detour. For Nishant Kumar, it became a five-year pursuit that saw him leave a corporate job, compete in thousands of tournaments and eventually cross $1 million in winnings. The 31-year-old IIT Guwahati graduate is now building a startup, Ollinlabs, which he describes as “the Chess.com of poker”.

Nishant Kumar is the IITian founder of Ollinlabs.

Nishant Kumar spoke to Hindustantimes.com about what it takes to become a professional poker player, his own career trajectory, the path from IIT to poker and much more.

From IIT to poker

Originally from Lalganj in Bihar, Nishant Kumar holds a BTech in Electronics & Communications at IIT Guwahati. After graduating in 2017, he followed a fairly conventional path, working at Sears Holdings and Procter & Gamble. But a house party in 2020 introduced him to poker, a game he says drew him in because it rewarded study and decision-making.

Getting introduced to poker changed the course of his life.

At that house party, Kumar had no idea that he would go on to land a job because of poker, quit the job because of the game and then build a startup centred on it.

“What hooked me wasn't the money. It was that the game punished bad decisions and flawed thinking and rewarded study. The more I put in, the more it paid back, and that's rare,” he explained.

Earning $1 million from poker

Poker is a card game in which players compete to win money or chips by making the best hand — or by convincing other players to fold.

Over the last five years, Nishant Kumar has participated in more than 120 live tournaments and over 6,300 online poker tournaments.

“I have been playing poker for over 5 years now and have cashed over $1 million+ cumulative across online and live poker tournaments,” he revealed.

“Most of that has been through online tournaments on Pokerbaazi, Adda52, Spartan and the rest before the online gaming ban,” he said.

However, the $1 million he has earned does not take into account money spent on travel and buy-ins. “that's a gross number. It doesn't subtract buy-ins, travel, or the many tournaments where you don't cash at all but ended up entering,” Kumar clarified.

Misconceptions about poker

For Kumar, who moved into industry-side poker full-time in 2023, the game is especially appealing because it rewards smart decision-making.

“The biggest misconception is that the cards decide who wins. In a single hand, anything can happen. Over thousands of hands, the luck washes out and the better decision-maker wins,” he said.

“The second misconception is that good players win by reading faces. Modern poker is mostly maths, probability and discipline. The people at the top study like chess players.”

The closest comparison to poker, according to him, would be investing and trading. “Any one day is noise, but over years your edge compounds.”

Taipei tournament marks turning point

In 2024, Pokerbaazi recruited Nishant Kumar as Head of Strategy. He quit the job the following year, after winning a massive prize in an international poker tournament. But Kumar is careful to stress that the tournament did not affect his decision to resign. Instead, he had been thinking for a long time about building his own company.

“I joined PokerBaazi in 2024 where I led strategy. I think what they valued was an unusual mix. I understood the business side from my corporate years and I understood the player side because I was competing seriously myself,” he said.

Kumar participated in the Asian Poker Tour (APT) Taipei in April 2025. He was the only Indian at the final table, and the decision to quit Pokerbaazi came soon afterwards.

“I made the final table of the Main Event, which had 2547 entries, and finished 5th. I was the only Indian at that final table,” he recalled.

Quitting his job

The Taipei tournament marked a significant turning point in Kumar’s life. Not only did it give him a massive cash prize, it also changed people’s attitudes.

Following the tournament, he resigned from his job and later started his own business. However, before that, it was his parents’ reaction that gave him a sense of validation.

Kumar acknowledged that his parents had struggled to explain his unusual career to relatives. Seeing him win big at an international tournament gave them a new perspective.

“When you've played enough tournaments, you know one result doesn't prove you're good, the same way one bad run doesn't prove you're bad.

What it was more particularly for my parents was a validation as they had struggle explaining my career choice to relatives, watching me play live they proudly would go on to say that our son competes internationally,” he explained.

Asked if he quit his job the next day, the 31-year-old replied: “It wasn't the next day. I'd been thinking about building something of my own for months and Taipei was always going to be the closing of one chapter.

"The result and the Indian gaming ban just made the timing obvious and turned out to be a catalyst.”

The jump to entrepreneurship

When questioned as to why he decided to build his own startup instead of focusing on well-paying poker tournaments, Kumar replied: “Because a poker career is a treadmill. Your income stops the day you stop playing and the swings never go away. A company is the opposite. It can compound without you sitting at a table.”

However, his dream is to do both, play poker while being an entrepreneur.

“Honestly, the dream is to do both: build something big enough that I play the biggest live events in the world on my own terms, not because I need to,” Kumar said.

What his startup does

Today, the IITian is building Ollinlabs in Bengaluru. He has envisioned it as the Chess.com of poker — a platform where players can play and refine their skills.

“It's a free app where you play against people at your level, earn a skill rating and get an AI coach that reviews your hands. The coach explains in plain language what you should have done and why,” Kumar explained.

“It's entirely free-to-play with virtual chips. There's no real money involved.

“Under the hood is our own AI poker engine, built by my co-founder and CTO, Vedant Joshi, who's from IIT Roorkee. The app is live in beta on the Play Store (ollinlabs.com/play) , iOS (ollinlabs.com/ios) is in TestFlight and players have already played over 105,000+ hands on our platform. Our neural solver that we have built inhouse can solve any poker situation in seconds,” Kumar explained.

His advice to aspiring players

Even though Nishant Kumar quit his job to focus on poker and built a startup around the game, he warns other players to be more cautious.

“For anyone reading this who's thinking of quitting their job to play poker: don't, unless you've tracked your results over a large sample and have enough money set aside to survive a bad year,” he advised.

The IITian founder explained that for all its money and glamour, poker can be a lonely game.

“Poker may look all glamorous from outside, but actually it is a very lonely pursuit where most days you question your decision.

“If you can lose money consistently for days and still wake up the next morning and still play your A game is when you should consider it,” he says.

Financial freedom from poker

Can a poker player achieve financial freedom through the game alone? For Kumar, the answer is ‘yes’ — but with a serious caveat.

“Done well, it can actually lead to financial freedom but that requires the discipline of a monk because the players you are competing with are putting in the work day in and out,” he says.

“One big score is not a career. Mine wasn't either. Building Ollinlabs was the reason to move away from full time poker & the core belief that ‘A kid who dreams of pursuing poker should have a path as legitimate as chess’,” he concluded.