When I Was A Donk – Dominik Nitsche

In this series, Card Player asks top pros to rewind back to their humble beginnings and provide insights regarding the mistakes, leaks, and deficiencies that they had to overcome in order to improve their games.

Dominik Nitsche is the youngest player in World Series of Poker history to win three bracelets. His first came in 2012 when he took down a $1,000 buy-in event for $654,797. His second was the 2014 WSOP Circuit National Championship for a $352,800 payday. He followed that up with his third later that summer in another $1,000 buy-in event for $335,659.

Most recently, Nitsche managed a win and two runner-up finishes during the EPT Dublin series to bank a combined $370,000. In total, the 25 year old from Minden has earned more than $5.5 million on the live tournament circuit, which is good enough for ninth place on the all-time German rankings.

Here, Nitsche talks about the lessons he learned during his early years as a live tournament pro.

It was 2009, right before I really got into live poker. I had played a few live tournaments and I was pretty happy with my online game. I was working on it consistently, so I thought that might be enough. But I ended up meeting an older pro at the Irish Open, who later became a friend, who really opened me up to aspects of the live game that would help me just by paying attention at the table.

Strangely enough, I ended up winning the next tournament I played. Of course, that created its own problem. I thought that with my game and the new tricks I had learned about live poker, that I had solved poker. I pretty much stopped trying to improve my game and as a result, the next two years weren’t so great.

After I woke up and realized I wasn’t the greatest, I hired a cash game coach and then won my first bracelet. That led to me going on a massive heater that I’m basically still on. But even though things are going well for me, I won’t allow myself to become arrogant again. Just because you are winning today doesn’t mean you are going to be winning tomorrow. You have to put in the work to get to the top, and then, even when you get there, you have to put in the work to stay there.

These days, I’m a very by-the-numbers player. If a situation pops up in poker that I’m not sure about, I have a program that will give me the answer. I went from having another player sort me out, to now having these programs that will keep my game sharp. I have a solution for short stack play, deep stack play, pretty much anything I want to know. It took me years to learn that poker is all about learning the numbers behind the plays, and not about that one sick read you think you might have. ♠