Dominik Nitsche Tears Up The Live Tournament Circuit

With online poker still recovering from Black Friday in the United States, there is a noticeable lack of young American pros tearing up the circuit. The best up-and-coming players during the poker boom are all now pushing 30 and can consider themselves veterans of the game.

But that’s not the case in Europe, where online poker continues to explode. It is there where we continue to see young poker phenoms making a name for themselves in some of the world’s toughest games.

Take 23-year-old Dominik Nitsche, for example. The German poker pro who grew up in a small city was largely unaffected by the Moneymaker boom. It wasn’t until Joe Hachem and then later Jamie Gold that Nitsche caught the poker bug and soon after, the high school student was tearing up the online sit-n-go leaderboards.

By the time he turned 18, Nitsche had already amassed a sizeable bankroll and he immediately jumped onto the live tournament circuit. Although he found the winner’s circle almost immediately, he did have to endure his fair share of ups and downs.

After losing a significant portion of his bankroll by staking unsuccessful horses and getting lazy in his development as a player, Nitsche took a long look at his game and decided to turn things around. The end result is a four-year run that includes nearly $3 million in tournament winnings along with three World Series of Poker bracelets.

Getting Started

Nitsche grew up with his parents and older brother in Minden, population just 80,000, in northeast Germany.

“There is nothing to do in Minden,” he said. “I don’t know why my parents chose to live there, to be honest. We traveled to Denmark a few times on holiday, but other than that, I didn’t get to see much of the rest of the world. If anything, that probably explains why I can’t get enough poker, because poker allows me to travel and experience new places.”

He was just 15 when he discovered poker, watching Joe Hachem win the 2005 WSOP main event and sweating the updates from the 2006 Series won by Jamie Gold.

“My high school friends and I would get together and play €1 home games. Then I discovered online poker and freeroll tournaments. I won some money and then I dedicated myself to mastering sit-n-gos. Once I had built up a big bankroll, I switched to multitable tournaments.”

He still wasn’t even old enough to play in a live casino, but Nitsche was already making more money as a high school student than most of the adults in his hometown.

“I bought myself a car for my 18th birthday,” he said. “I think that’s when my parents realized how serious I was about the game. Not every high school kid has a six-figure bankroll, you know.”

Once he turned 18, Nitsche was eligible to play in many live poker tournaments throughout Europe, Australia, and Latin America. His sit-n-go strategy translated well into online satellites and soon, he was winning seats into big buy-in events.

“I was able to go to the Aussie Millions, EPT Dortmund, and the Irish Open, among others,” he recalled. “All of a sudden, I was traveling and seeing the world, which was incredible. Then I won a seat into the LAPT Argentina, which boom, I won.”

Growing Pains

Nitsche banked $381,030 for the win in Argentina. Then in October of 2009, he finished second in the WPT Marrakech high roller event for another $120,885. So what did this 18 year old do with his newfound wealth?

“I did the same thing that everyone else does when they get their hands on some real money for the first time,” he said. “I made poor decisions with it. I didn’t go crazy on myself, I never do, but at the time, I was under the impression that I owned the poker world and the game was really easy. I started staking other players and although my results weren’t too terrible, the guys I was staking weren’t coming through.”

To make things worse, Nitsche stopped trying to improve as a poker player. He had won big and won early, and foolishly felt that he was unbeatable.

“I just wasn’t playing that well,” he admitted. “You know, I had won a tournament, so I kind of lied to myself about my abilities. I just wasn’t working as hard as I should have been during that time. I fell behind the curve. It wasn’t until 2011 that I really began to be honest with myself, got a coach, and then things started to turn around.”

While some players rely on instinct and a natural card sense to keep them on top, Nitsche doesn’t believe he was gifted with any kind of poker skills.

“I really don’t believe that I was born with some natural ability to play cards. I’m not incredibly good at math either. Maybe some people are naturally talented, but not me. I became a poker player through hard work and that’s something that I got away from for a little while.”

Turning It All Around

In 2011, Nitsche started one of the more impressive hot streaks in recent poker history. In April, he won the $4,000 Merit Middle East Poker Championship for $164,100 and in June, he won the $2,500 Merit Summer Open for $123,366. The next summer, Nitsche finally turned 21 and attended his first World Series of Poker. In the $1,000 buy-in event, he topped a massive field of 1,740 players to win his first bracelet and the $654,797 first-place prize.

Those three wins alone would have constituted an amazing comeback, but Nitsche still hasn’t slowed down. He won the 2012 $3,300 WPT Emperors Palace Poker Classic for $206,153 and then in 2013, he finished third in the €10,000 WSOP Europe main event for $551,720. Earlier this year, he won the $10,000 WSOP Circuit National Championship, scoring his second bracelet and $352,800 and then this summer, he took down another $1,000 no-limit hold’em event, giving him three bracelets and another $335,659 in prize money.

When asked what he credited his recent success to, Nitsche explained that he stopped making excuses for his lack of results.

“If you are a bad player, you’ll always find excuses for why you aren’t winning. Yes, you could be running bad, but the best players will find a way to minimize the damage when they are running bad instead of just blaming their bad luck. You really have to be critical of every play you make, or else you’ll fall into losing habits and won’t improve.”

Nitsche has always looked at the numbers in any given situation, trusting the math of a situation more than his instincts. In order to ensure he makes the right play, he uses several programs to make sure he stays on top.

“One of the best parts of my game is that I’m really emotionless at the table,” he said. “Other people let egos disrupt their play, but I’m basically a robot. I feel nothing when I see a bad play happen. To me, that’s just another variable I have to adjust for. I gather all of the information I can and then make the best decision possible.”

Moving Forward

Although he loves the fact that at just age 23 he now has as many WSOP bracelets as pros such as Antonio Esfandiari, Barry Greenstein, Sam Farha, Michael Mizrachi, and Vanessa Selbst, Nitsche cares more about the money than the titles.

“The prestige of the bracelets are completely secondary to the money. Winning titles is very nice, but at the end of the day, this is my job and I’m doing it for the money.”
Nitsche still loves to travel and is planning a trip to Japan, but says that when he’s playing poker, he tries to stay focused.

“This isn’t a vacation for me,” he said. “I’m not lazy. I love my job, this is what I do. Every day, I get up excited about playing poker. If you don’t work hard in this game, you’re going to get passed by. I’m going to make sure that doesn’t happen to me again.” ♠

Bracelets Are For Closers

Dominik Nitsche has earned a whopping $3.5 million on the tournament circuit in his short career, having cashed 61 times while making 15 final tables. What makes this stat even more incredible is the fact that of those 15 final table appearances, Nitsche has won nine of them.

That’s mean Nitsche has won a remarkable 15 percent of the tournaments he’s cashed in and 60 percent of the tournaments he’s final tabled. The bottom line is that Nitsche is a closer. Although he’s the first to admit that variance has something to do with his results, the German pro credits his background as a sit-n-go specialist as the main reason for his success.

“I think push/fold situations, when the blinds are big and the stacks are shorter, are the strongest part of my game and that comes from all of my experience as a sit-n-go player. I’m very comfortable playing preflop with a wide range of stack sizes because I’ve studied it for a long time. That’s where the numbers come into play. For example, in a spot where I’m opening with 25 percent of my range and I get three-bet, I want to be able to continue with about 45 percent of my hands, so I’ll play that hand in that position against that particular opponent. That’s the way my brain works when I’m playing in a tournament. I’m constantly adjusting my play so that I stay balanced.”

“Some of the old school players will tell you that they don’t care about the money and that they are going for the win, but the payout structure can actually help you find the right strategy for a final table. Some top heavy structures mean that you should be fine gambling early on, but that all depends on your chip count and who is sitting on your immediate left.”

“Sit-n-gos have a very unique payout structure, with one-table sit-n-gos paying 50 percent of the prize money to first place. So early on, I naturally adjusted my play to maximize my profitability in these end-game situations. Now when I’m deep in a multitable tournament, my experience has helped me make the right decisions, especially when it comes to ICM (Independent Chip Model) considerations. Obviously there’s a lot of variance involved in my wins, but I’m also putting myself into good spots as well.” ♠

The Top 15 All-Time German Money Winners

A number of German players, Nitsche included, dominated tournament poker last year. Here is a look at the nation’s top earners.

1. Philip Gruissem — $9,452,278
2. Pius Heinz — $8,898,397
3. Igor Kurganov — $7,473,044
4. Tobias Reinkemeier — $7,292,738
5. Fabian Quoss — $5,348,580
6. Ole Schemion — $5,206,785
7. Marvin Rettenmaier — $4,755,614
8. Niklas Heinecker — $4,546,619
9. Martin Finger — $4,265,641
10. Benny Spindler — $3,994,896
11. Dominik Nitsche — $3,523,778
12. Sebastian Ruthenberg — $3,285,118
13. Moritz Kranich — $2,835,723
14. George Danzer — $1,934,781
15. Max Heinzelmann — $1,840,475