Nithin George Eapen Walks Away From the WSOP a Winner After Surviving a Heart Attack

Scattered among the 6,737-player field that made up the 2016 World Series of Poker Main Event were countless satellite winners, each one riding a proverbial freeroll into the game’s greatest spectacle.

But after what he’s experienced during the last three weeks, Nithin George Eapen has them all beat.

The 40-year-old recreational player and resident of Stamford, Connecticut entered Day 3 of the Main Event with 127,300 in chips to work with — less than a month removed from a major brush with mortality.

On June 26, having bagged up the night before during Day 1b of Event #41: $1,500 Monster Stack No-Limit Hold’em, Eapen prepared to enter the Day 2 fray. As he did so, Eapen’s body began sending warning signals, but with a potential bracelet run awaiting, his focus remained squarely on the felt.

“I bagged a healthy stack the night before,” he recalled. “But the next morning, I woke up early with chest pains and found myself reading about heart attacks online. The pain went away but soon returned at around 9:30 a.m. I did not give it much thought though, as I wanted to play the tournament. My friend Tom suggested we visit the hospital as a precaution, but I told him that could wait. After all, I do not have any issues with blood pressure, blood sugar, or cholesterol, and I play squash most days.”

Fittingly enough, following a full session of fine play the day before, Eapen’s initial instincts proved to be spot on. Only two hours into Day 2, Eapen realized that he was experiencing symptoms severe enough to warrant voluntarily withdrawing himself from the tournament.

“I began feeling pain and uneasiness at the table,” Eapen recounted. “Around 1 p.m., I started feeling nauseated, which was the next tick mark on the heart attack checklist. So I walked to the security person and asked them to please call an ambulance. The pain started getting worse by the time they arrived, so I was taken to Valley Medical.”

Unlike many unlucky heart attack victims who aren’t able to catch the symptoms in time, Eapen was fortunate enough to seek assistance before his health deteriorated further. Even so, his heart had experienced a traumatic event known non-ST segment elevation myocardial infarction, NSTEMI heart attack.

“My electrocardiogram (ECG) showed no variations,” Eapen said. “So they were not sure if I had even had one, but the pain was too much to be anything else. Later in the day, they found troponin levels in my blood work, which is a protein that is usually released into the blood by dying heart muscles after they have been starved of oxygen and blood.”

Eapen was administered an angiogram to check his blood vessels for blockages, which found less than 70-percent obstruction, before having a stent inserted to maintain adequate blood flow through the affected arteries.

Mortality and Marriage

As the doctors worked their wonders, Eapen, married with four children, had the discussion every family man dreads.

“I knew my wife was tense and would have an anxiety attack when I told her,” Eapen said. “She was not able to sleep, and she really wanted to come to Las Vegas, but I told her not to. I was doing fine emotionally, and anyway, it’s the doctor who does the surgery.”

Put in a position where most men would not be doing “fine,” Eapen found himself quite calm and collected at the time. While he considers himself a firm practitioner of the Catholic Church’s Xion archdiocese, Eapen, a native of the Indian state of Kerala, relied on his homeland’s Hindu traditions in order to deal with the idea of death.

“I am ritualistic in going to church,” Eapen said. “But I do not believe in the concepts of heaven or hell. Instead, I like the Hindu philosophy of karma and rebirth when it comes to that. My feeling has always been, if I die early, it’s like a VIP ticket I have in this queue towards death that we all wait in once we are born. Imagine if we are waiting in line to get a ticket, perhaps like the registration line at the Rio, and suddenly we get a VIP pass to skip the line. We would be happy right? It’s the same way with life.”

Despite this seemingly cavalier attitude when assessing thoughts of his earthly demise, Eapen wasn’t afraid to admit how dearly every moment matters. Throughout his conversation with PokerNews, the happy husband returned repeatedly to the role played by his wife Priyanka, recognizing that without her winning a poker tournament is a worthless prize.

“I had no fear during the time of pain,” Eapen remembered. “But family and friends are the most important thing in life for me. So it is a great thing to see one more day, to spend one more moment with your wife, your kids, and your friends.

“My wife and I have been together from elementary school onward. We dated for 10 years and have been married 13 more. She works as an actuary at GenRe, and it is a fact that I get to do all the things I like in life, like visiting the WSOP, because she works so hard. I really want to win for her most of all, along with our children Neil, Niya, Neha, and Noah. My biggest win ever was obviously being able to woo the girl I wanted, marrying her and having children. A win in the WSOP Main Event will never equal that, but it would be a cherry on top of the cake.”

Eapen himself studied engineering academically, earning his undergraduate degree in India before adding his Master’s stateside. Over the years he’s worked as both a sales and manufacturing engineer, as well as in software development, and on …

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