Here come the Germans! Joe Ingram interviewed two of the top tournament players in the world for his Poker Life Podcast. Dominik Nitsche appeared on Tuesday, while Fedor Holz joined Ingram yesterday. The two German shared their thoughts on all things poker including delusional tournament players, lazy strategy, and playing big cash games in Macau.
If you ever wanted to get inside the head of some of the top players in the world, then you shouldn't miss the last couple of episodes of the Joe Ingram show a.k.a. the Poker Life Podcast. Ingram has been crushing it this week with several top guests on his podcast, which he records and later posts on YouTube. Ingram kicked off the week with a stellar interview with Barry Greenstein that lasted over four hours. Greenstein dished on many topics including everyone's favorite GOAT: Phil Ivey.
And then mid-week, Ingram turned his focus on two younger players. Both happened to be Germans. Ingram invited Fedor Holz and Dominik Nitsche to his show. They represented 40% of the Top 5 All-Time German money winners. At the present moment, Fedor Holz won approximately $27 million in tournaments. The crazy thing is that Dominil Nitsche is currently fifth overall in Germany, but he won only half as much as Holz with $13.6 million in total earnings.
Everyone knows that Fedor Holz walked away from full-time grinding after cracking the Matrix and winning $23 million. Since stepping away from the game last year, Holz banked another $4 million in various high roller affairs. Not too shabby for someone who's “retired”, eh? Ingram and Holz had a brief chat about numerous topics including the so-called million dollar cash game in Macau.
Holz was happy about the concept of a cash game in Macau filled with whales and he was surprised/impressed/inspired by the huge poker boom in China. However, the honest Holz was not thrilled about how the organizers overpromised and underdelivered on the juiciness of the cash game. Apparently, a much lower number of wealthy businessmen actually played in the cash games and high roller events and it wasn't a whale-fest with 50+ uberwealthy cardslingers ready to gamble it up. Instead, it seemed like the big game attracted four sharks (including Ivey and Jungleman) and only three businessmen who showed up. I suspect they all feared Holz!
Holz lives in obscurity in Vienna where he only gets noticed about once a month. Real fame is something that scared him. Holz also told a story about meeting actor Kevin Spacey in Europe last year (no hank panky), but Holz noticed that he didn't want to be super famous like a Hollywood star.
Watch the Fedor Holz episode here...
I first came across Dominik Nitsche when he was still a teen. The young German flew to South America to play in a Latin American Poker Tour event in Argentina. Nitsche binked the LAP Mar Del Plata. Since then he's win over $13.6 million in tournaments and moved into the Top 5 for money earners from Germany.
Dominik Nitsche has been a regular on the super high roller circuit the last three years. He joked that he fired more bullets than anyone else in those 100K but he finally had some positive results as of late. Nitsche cashed last week in Macau at the Super High Roller Bowl for a fourth-place finish and a score worth $1.6 million.
Nitsche won the partypoker Millions in RozVegas last month for a modest score, but he took down the €111,111 buy-in One Drop at the 2017 WSOP Europe. He binked nearly €3.5 million or approximately $4M greenbacks.
Nitsche appeared on the Poker Life Podcast to discuss a bunch of topics including what it takes to be a consistent winner and how delusional players convince themselves they're better tournament players than they really are. "You can be posting consistent results, but you could still be a bad player," he explained.
The quote of the day was easily: "I think poker players are extremely lazy." That's how the Germans have been crushing the game... they've been showing up and putting a bit of work into it. That's their big secret: they're exploiting the laziness of others.
Watch the Dom Nitsche episode here...
