At just 22-years of age Dominik Nitsche has earned a cat’s whisker under $3m in live tournaments and over $3m in online poker tournaments.
That’s what I like about the skinny German. There are no airs and graces. What you see is what you get. An awkward, yet loveable personality, that makes the women want to cuddle him and the men sit him down and teach him how to arm wrestle.
Nitsche was in Johannesburg to defend the World Poker Tour (WPT) trophy that he won in Season XI. Back then his rail consisted of…yeah that’s right…just me, and he very nearly didn’t make the trip this year.
“I only came back because Melanie {Weisner} and Rupert {Elder} were coming. If they weren’t coming I don’t think I would have bothered because it’s not much fun when you are on your own.”
But this is the Palace of Dreams, the place where you won your first title. How could you not want to defend it, plus people always do well when they return to their place of victory right?
“I don’t think that’s the way it works. I went back to Vegas this year and got destroyed.”
Thankfully, Nitsche was back to defend his title. Not a lot of players come to a country as far away as South Africa and as a writer you need all the help you can get. When Nitsche made the final table it was a writer’s wet dream – it’s just a shame he blew it, proving it doesn’t matter how great you are, you can still drop clangers with the best of them.
So it’s goodbye Joberg and hello…Edinburgh. Yes, the German nomad is going to try and lay some roots down in Bonny Scotland. But with the entire world to choose from why has he chosen one of the coldest places in the world?
“It’s a really nice place and I have a lot of friends there, which is important to me. I was staying with Manig {Loeser} in London and when he moved to Vienna with his girlfriend it got kind of lonely and boring. My good friend Andrew Teng asked me to move in with him and so I did so just a few days ago.”
So what does Nitsche do when he is not playing poker?
“I spend a lot of time in airports just sitting around.”
Ok…what about when you were younger then?
“When I was really young I used to play cards with my parents and then I played video games. I was always pretty terrible at sports, which sucks because I am a terrible loser. So I picked up video games and then started playing poker, which to me was another form of video game.”
I sometimes wonder what Superman would see if he looked inside Nitsche’s skull. I swear there is a monkey in there that jumps from crashing cymbals to working out complex poker algorithms. I reckon he was a genius in school.
“Absolutely not. I somehow made it through, which says a lot considering I was playing so much poker when I was still in high school. I just didn’t care very much because I was earning so much money playing poker.”
No change there then.
