Rishi Mehta's poker journey culminates in first major tournament win
The name Rishi Mehta might not immediately jump out to the worldwide poker scene, but his infectious personality has made him a standout player and content contributor around the Northeast poker community and here at the Borgata Spring Poker Open.
But the 27-year-old from Somerset, New Jersey didn't always have ambitions to play poker for a living. He earned a degree in political science with a minor in creative writing from Rutgers University, but poker was introduced to him at a young age.
"Some of the parents on the baseball team, I was on when I was younger, had a poker night, and my parents took them up on the offer one day," Mehta told us. "However, it wasn't until college that I got really into it. I would mass-consume Doug Polk videos and High Stakes Poker videos. Learning how to tilt my hands and cascade the chips like (Tom) Dawn, while quietly saying all in."
COVID curveball
Consuming videos soon turned into a $0.25/$0.50 blind game with his three best friends in their dorm at Rutgers, but school was always a top priority for the first-generation Indian American.
He was on track to go to law school, but Mehta was still playing $5 Spin-N-Gos on PokerStars during his intro to theater class.
But timing is everything and Mehta's graduation date from Rutgers just so happened to be in the middle of 2020.
"I was working with the Eagleton Institute of Politics, and they allowed me to do an internship with the Secretary of State of New Jersey working on campaigns around the state," Mehta said. "My senior year was right in the middle of COVID, no commencement speaker, no graduation, nothing."
After graduation, Mehta stumbled upon an Instagram page for the private game scene around New Jersey. He convinced his parents that it was safe to play in an "underground game" and headed over with his best friend from college.
With $80 in tow, the goal was to triple barrel 7-2 and windmill it in his opponent's faces.
That didn't quite go so well for Mehta. So, with a job doing some ghostwriting and working as a staff assistant for a local politician, he decided to take the hours of content he had been watching seriously.
"I just got disenchanted with politics, and much like poker, once I left the land of theory and entered application. It became far more disenchanting and poker was just a great outlet."
Life-changing money
After making his way back to the East Coast, Mehta started dealing in some of those private games around the state to earn some money to play.
He made a couple of friends within the game and they introduced him to the tournament poker scene with a trip to Live Casino & Hotel in Philadelphia in November of 2024.
Mehta would go on to finish in sixth place from a field of 2,570 for a life-changing score of $82,290, and then he followed up with another sixth-place finish in the 2025 Borgata Winter Poker Open Kickoff in January of 2025.
"We chopped six ways, in November, and I was just running so pure, having no idea what I was doing at the time," Mehta said. "That springboarded my career, but I didn't really play much after that before jumping into the Kickoff event a few months later."
Mehta fired two bullets in the Kickoff and got unlucky on both, prompting a call to his parents to say he was done with poker, vowing to be one of the few players who get the early score and keep his money. Then his Mom convinced him to fire another bullet.
"That was a really significant moment for me because my entire pursuit up, especially after graduating college, I was working really hard to convince my family to be accepting of my doing this," Mehta said of the phone call with his Mom. "That kind of backing and support really meant a lot to me."
Leveling up to Borgata
With a couple of five-figure scores under his belt, Mehta had some friends who worked with the TriState Poker stream at the Live Casino and he started jumping into the booth to try his hand at commentary. With his parents finally on board, Mehta made a trip to Las Vegas for the 2025 WSOP Main Event.
Mehta ended up shadowing Jeff Platt at the WSOP for a day. When he got back home Mehta worked up the courage to email the Borgata team asking if he could try his hand at their live stream for the 2026 Borgata Winter Poker Open.
They said yes and he's been in the booth ever since, but that doesn't mean he's stepping away from the felt. Mehta picked up his first career trophy in Event #3 of the WPO and added a second Borgata trophy earlier this week after taking down the $450 True Triple Stack during the 2026 Spring Poker Open.
"I love talking about poker, I can't stop talking about poker," Mehta said. "I see a lot of life in poker and poker in life. Obviously, the goal is to be as good at the game as possible, but my biggest goal while rising through the game is to keep my humanity throughout."
