Dominik Nitsche Tells Solver Critics To ‘Grow Up’

High-tech poker was the hot topic on the Dan “Jungleman” Cates Podcast with four-time bracelet winner and poker tool creator Dominik Nitsche discussing the use of solvers and artificial intelligence to improve at the game.
The conversation included his own role in the 2024 World Series of Poker main event when he was part of the coaching team that helped Jonathan Tamayo win the tournament for $10 million. Despite breaking no rules, the group was criticized for their use of a laptop on the rail in between hands. The controversy surrounding that kind of coaching recently led to major rule changes at the WSOP regarding the use of electronic devices.
In addition to his cut of Tamayo’s winnings, Nitsche has $21 million in live cashes of his own, including the $4 million he pocketed for taking down the WSOP Europe High Roller For One Drop back in 2017. Just last year, the German also won ACR Poker’s Venom event online for $1.8 million.
During his time on the podcast, the DTO Poker founder alleviated some concerns about using solvers and artificial intelligence on the rail, providing some insight on what can actually be done, and what isn’t possible. He also spoke about the future of technology when it comes to improving one’s skills at the table.
Check out some of the podcast highlights below and you can watch or listen to the entire episode on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or any podcast app.
Dominik Nitsche: People have this misconception about how deep you can get as a poker coach during the main event. You can’t really do much. You can’t run a full simulation on [an opponent]. You can’t plug information into your dream machine and get an answer. That’s not how this works. All this advice has to be quite general, and it has to be applicable to the player, and you do not want to overwhelm him.
Dan Cates: I have a suggestion for the rebrand for your app – “Dom’s Dream Machine,” DDM.
Dominik Nitsche: We were just about to push a big update that’s coming very close to the [dream machine], I’m quite excited for it. People have a weird misconception about solvers and my software as well, which is sad and kind of good for me professionally. I make more money playing cards and I make less money selling my app because people don’t understand it, but that’s okay.
Dan Cates: What kind of money do you make selling your app?
Dominik Nitsche: It’s a lot less than I do playing cards. I do it for the love of the game, and I like my team a lot, great guys. I just have fun doing it. I learned a lot from building it, from being involved with the depth, like programming and stuff. But I have not made any real money from it. I learn how things work and how the logic behind things work. That’s pretty fun, but it’s not something I want to take full time.
Dan Cates: Before I give you my opinion about the main event, I want to ask two questions. First, do you think your [most vocal] critics can actually use computers, and secondly do you have anything to say to them?
Dominik Nitsche: I made it quite clear what I think of most of them. I think it’s a fair assessment that most of them just don’t know how the software works. In general, it’s just the fear of computers.
In a way it benefits me when people think I play like a robot. I like having that image out there. It may or may not be true. That’s for everyone to figure out if they play with me. The truth of the matter is that no computer can give you the right answer in 0.5 seconds. Come on, grow up.
It’s not like a magic machine. Try and use this software for yourself, and you’ll quickly discover its limitations. I can assure you that you can’t just whip it out in the middle of a big final table and get a perfect answer.
[At the main event], that looked like the simulation that I had planned. Like, what if this changes and then you’re 50 big blinds deep instead of 42? Or what if the stacks shift in this way, what happens then? That’s maybe as close as you can get. But you never have a perfect answer in front of you. That idea is crazy.
Dan Cates: If I’m really honest, I didn’t really see anything wrong with it, other than it might give poker a bit of a bad look because it looks very techie and nerdy, and this just alienates loads of people. But I don’t think it’s unethical.
And there’s this thing where, once you get very competitive and have to think outside the box on how to get an edge, there are things that are really close to not having the right spirit of the game involved, that if you don’t use proper judgment, you can slip into the slight cheating category. It goes from something that’s being okay to, “Whoa, what the fuck, you’re a scumbag” or even can have the perception of that if other people’s reasoning is bad.
Maybe this falls into that category if you have those kinds of critics. But as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t seem against the rules unless someone makes it the rules to use a computer or a phone in between breaks. (A rule the WSOP recently implemented.)
It’s pretty easy to load up your phone and check something with some software after hands are over. No one’s going to complain about that. In addition, it’s not enforceable at all, so why make the rule? It just really kind of fucks everyone over.
I personally did not have a problem with it. It’s an interesting point because I think a lot of recreational players are going to be wildly intimidated by that, and a lot of not-so-great players also will be very intimidated. They may think you’re the poker Terminator even if you claim not to be.
Dominik Nitsche: Fair points, that’s definitely true. I couldn’t agree more. The thing I’d say to those people is that coaching has always happened.
Just because now it’s some nerdy guy who brought a laptop, who runs a coaching site, it’s not fair to project the responsibility of protecting the game or upholding some sort of image for the general public onto the guy playing. We’re competing in a game. Poker is a competition. Now if you don’t like me playing your home games, it’s fine. I won’t play in your home games.
The thing is, I want to compete on a big stage, and we’re competing for a lot of money. I have every right and responsibility as a coach to maximize that as I see fit within the rules, and that’s what I did.
Now, if people are afraid of computers, I find that funny. I like poking fun at people. I love seeing how mad people get. Ultimately, the truth is I say a lot of things and I create a bit of drama for my app. But now that you have me here, I’ll say, “Look, guys, there’s only so much of an advantage you gain by doing this.”
I don’t have the answers in real time. I’m just making my best guess based on stuff that I’ve seen. That’s all it is. I have material, I look at it, and my job as a coach is to interpret that information and apply it to the current situation. I can do that without a laptop. It’s just a lot easier when I have a laptop in front of me so I can show stuff. There is no magic machine running stuff, as much as I wish there was, and I would sell it to you. I’d love selling it to you, but it doesn’t exist.
Dan Cates: It was like an [actual] dream machine.
Dominik Nitsche: Yeah, some dream machine. We used my software to prepare blind against blind situations against “Lena900” (Niklas Astedt) and what actually happened? [Tamayo] played zero blind against blind hands against Lena900. We prepared to play button against big blind against Joe Serock. [Tamayo] played zero hands against Joe’s big blind. A lot of the stuff we prepped did not even happen.
Heads up, none of the spots that we discussed happened. It was insane. I said, ‘You want to jam these,’ and none of them happened. My coaching was hilariously inefficient. The only thing I called was that [Jordan] Griff would clash with [Astedt]. I knew it would happen, but our strategy was based on three-handed play. It happened faster than we had anticipated, and the wrong person won for our prep.
So, if you ever hire me as a coach, I’ll probably get a lot of things wrong, and I also might make a lot of people angry in the process. (Joking)
Dan Cates: Well if nerdy guys with glasses and a laptop make people angry, those people should probably consider some self-reflection.
Dominik Nitsche: It’s the laptop. It’s poker getting more technical. This device with all the answers.
You can’t go back to the old days, and even in the old days you were also not a winning poker player. So grow up. If you want to get good at poker now you need some sort of tech and you can’t do it on pen and paper. No trolling, I think it’s just a fear of technology.
People are like, “Ooh, GTO software. Ooh, instant answers.” People don’t know how it works. We just need to educate people better for what they are and what they can do. We try this with our software and people just refuse to get the education.
Dan Cates: What do you mean?
Dominik Nitsche: There are people who just don’t want to improve. They just want to hate on the new generation for doing something to improve their game. I think that’s part of the reason why poker is still so soft is because people just refuse to get better. Instead of getting better, they’d rather tear people down than try to put in the effort.
Dan Cates: It’s easier to tear people down than actually change. Change is pretty fucking hard to be fair. One of the things I’m trying to cultivate with my community is that we all change together. If you’re not used to laptops and sims, you’re not going to be that good at poker. In addition, now AI is really a thing too in the real world and now you’ve got to learn AI if you’re going to be at the top for anything.
Dominik Nitsche: I’m a huge believer in AI. I have investments in basically anything AI that I believe has potential. I use it in my day-to-day life all the time for small questions to financial planning. I do so much with AI. It even helps with travel planning as we look at restaurants.
We are also in the middle of incorporating it into poker stuff with our software. I think it’s only going to get better, and the potential is basically unimaginable at this point.
I actually believe the potential for AI in poker is huge. We can use these large language models to make sense of things we previously didn’t understand, if we were to give it the right data.
In poker, one player has a range, the other player has a range, and these ranges are made up of combos. These combos are not the same for both players. You can basically seed the AI certain range constructions, and say, ‘This is how they respond against these actions. Please summarize my betting strategy.’
This is something we’re currently experimenting with, and the results are actually already pretty good. You can basically tell the AI coach to explain to you why certain hands feature in a check-raise range, or you can get it to explain what should be the checking range on certain boards, or how you should be splitting your range – just as long as you feed it that information that you can get through solvers.
You can leverage AI to put all of this into human terms now, but it requires a lot of labor from the humans behind it. I think that that idea has a lot of potential, and I think we’re just scratching the surface with what we are doing right now. So, I’m really excited for that. ♠