Surinder Sunar: You’d need seven pages to list his tournament cashes

I was standing at the bar in the Holland Casino in Amsterdam and my legs were wobbling. This is about fifteen years ago, but the memory is solidly etched in my mind. Surinder Sunar was telling me the words he lives by.

Surinder, it seems, had a grandfather who lived in the north of India and at the time of this tale his grandfather was 107 years old. Between traveling the world playing high stakes cash games and poker tournaments, Surinder would visit his grandfather high up in the mountains and receive wisdom.

We were drinking beer from tall thin glasses and I wasn’t sure if I should have any more. But Surinder said, “My grandfather told me one time, he said, if you can stand up then you can keep on drinking. But if you fall down, then you have to go to bed.” As I was allowed to use the bar’s railing for support, I had another beer.

Show 29 (March 2) with Surinder Sunar is online now! Click the play button to listen:

[podcast]http://www.thepokershowlive.com/media/mp3/219.mp3[/podcast] Prefer to download? Right click here and Save As.

Surinder Sunar is as much a part of the world poker tournament scene as the final table furniture. He is number eighty-eight on the all time tournament money list and has pretty much played them all. The first time he made a WSOP final table was 1990, coming third at a final table that included Johnny Moss. That’s how long Surinder has been plying his trade at the game.

In some ways, Surinder is a man of mystery. You’ll never have any indication of his finances save for the fact that he’s always in action, and if you want to find his name on a leaderboard then it’s best to look from the bottom up.

Because Surinder, more than anything else, is a survivor. You’d need seven pages to list his tournament cashes, and big wins like the WPT Paris have been sprinkled in along with success in Amsterdam, Paris, and cashes at every major stop on tour. “But I still haven’t won the World Series of Poker,” he says to me with a smile. No, but he hasn’t stopped trying, either.

Surinder has poker stories to beat the band. Like when he left one hundred thousand dollars in his Amsterdam hotel and didn’t think of it until he woke up the next morning in Wolverhampton. Making Phil Hellmuth cry at a final table in Atlantic City at the Taj Mahal, or being the first foreign poker player to play in the Aviation Club in Paris. And traveling to Las Vegas with Irish bookmaker Terry Rogers. Surinder is the original professional tournament poker player, and aside from a few grey hairs it hasn’t broken his stride at all.

Show 29 (March 2) with Surinder Sunar is online now! Click the play button to listen:

[podcast]http://www.thepokershowlive.com/media/mp3/219.mp3[/podcast] Prefer to download? Right click here and Save As.