17/03/2010, Poker Tournaments

Aashish Nanak, an eight year-old boy from Chandigrah, India, has won half of million dollars (22,912,500.38 Indian Rupees) in an online poker tournament.

The eight year old boy is a computer genius, who was first introduced to computers at the age of three. He started building webpages at four and by the age of six, he was already interested in online poker. When he won the half million of dollars, Aashish was using his uncle's account.
“He has always loved the internet and computers, he started his own web pages when he was only four years old, he is a very clever boy,” said Aashish's mother.

It all started when the boy's mother, who works in a local hotel as a maid, left him in front of a cartoon playing on a computer screen in order to keep him quiet, while she was performing her duties.

The poker room is now refusing to pay out the winnings because of the age of the boy. The Nanak family says that the poker website knew about the real age of the boy because even the staff members called the boy the “littlepokerwizard”.

The boy had even managed to win and to collect smaller amounts of money at the same website and he got paid out to a PayPal account that his uncle had set up for him.
The poker website, which aims to remain anonymous, blocked his account. The boy's family and the poker room are now in a legal battle, in front of a New Delhi court.