It's seldom at the World Series of Poker that you see final table players vying to finish in second place, but that happened in Event 59, $1,000 no-limit hold 'em, thanks to an absolutely dominant performance from Dominic Nitsche, a 21-year-old online pro hailing from Minden, Germany. With his win over the second largest field of the WSOP (4,620 players, trailing only the main event), Nitsche took home $654,797 and his first WSOP bracelet.
Nitsche entered the final table of the three-day event with three million of the 13.86 million chips in play. His closest competitor, Jonathan Hilton, had only 1.8 million in chips. Once the final table began, Nitsche immediately started chipping up. He quickly eliminated Daniel Eichorn in ninth place to build his stack to 4.5 million in chips, and when he did the same to Jonathan Miller in eighth and then Frankie Johnson in sixth, he was up to 7.35 million, more than half the chips in play. From that point on, he'd take out Randolph Lasogna in fifth and Sebastian Comel in fourth before a heads-up battle that never saw opponent Jonathan Hilton rise above 30 percent of the chips in play. Hilton finally succumbed when his Ks-5s never caught up to Nitsche's Ac-8h after a preflop all-in. All told, it took just four hours for Nitsche to completely devastate the final table.
Despite his age, Nitsche wasn't exactly green behind the ears coming into his first WSOP. At 18, he won his first major tournament, a Latin American Poker Tour main event to the tune of $381,030 and despite his pedigree being mostly in the online realm, he'd scored three other six-digit windfalls en route to WSOP.
"I started playing poker six years ago and ever since I got any good at this game, I just wanted to play at the World Series," Nitsche told WSOP.com. "The age limit is 21, which is really unfortunate for me, because I would have been here four years ago. I'm just glad I could come here. I was ready to have a good time. I've played in absolute loads of tournaments here. I've played like 40 tournaments since I got here. I think I was just well prepared for it. I grind every day when I'm at home, so it wasn't a problem for me to do it here. I think that's kind of what helped me push to the victory."
Despite that experience, he admitted to nerves in this WSOP's earliest stages. "I must honestly say I didn't play my best at the start of the series. I was just getting into it and getting used to the players. They play way differently than Europeans. I just had to adjust to the players and I feel the deeper we got into the series, the more I got a feel for how they play and how I can take advantage of their weaknesses. I brought my absolute best game in this tournament and took advantage of so many good spots and I think I played real well."
This was Nitsche's fourth cash of the series and Germany's second bracelet. This cash the largest of his career, took him well over $1,000,000 in live tournament earnings, but for Nitsche, it appears to be only the beginning. "I've been playing this game for six years and I've been playing live poker for four years now. I'm not looking to stop any time soon. I've had success, I have great friends who travel with me, I'm living the life right now and it's awesome."
Other notable finishers include Jake Cody (35th), Roland Israelashvili (55th) and Phil Ivey (208th) .
Below are the complete results of Event 59 at the 2012 World Series of Poker:
Event 59: No-limit hold'em
Buy-in: $1,000
Entries: 4,620
Prize pool: $1,566,000
Players in the money: 466
1. Dominik Nitsche ($654,797)
2. Jonathan Hilton ($405,156)
3. Alex Cordero ($291,725)
4. Sebastien Comel ($215,592)
5. Randolph Lanosga ($160,665)
6. Franklin Johnson ($120,748)
7. Martin Vallo ($91,476)
8. Jonathan Miller ($69,896)
9. Daniel Eichhorn ($53,846)
10. Iakov Onuchin ($41,788)
11. Joshua Prager ($41,788)
12. Hieu Nguyen ($41,788)
13. Daniel Thomas ($32,682)
14. Yoav Tenenbaum ($32,682)
15. James Taylor ($32,682)
16. David Steirman ($25,780)
17. Gylbert Drolet ($25,780)
18. Wayne Brown ($25,780)
19. Aditya Agarwal ($20,499)
20. Christopher Hart ($20,499)
21. Christopher Bonita ($20,499)
22. Harald Olsen ($20,499)
23. Fernando Suaya ($20,499)
24. Eric Levesque ($20,499)
25. Andrea Tropea ($20,499)
26. Todor Plaseski ($20,499)
27. Even Orman ($20,499)
28. Erik Hellman ($16,424)
29. Sohale Khalili ($16,424)
30. Thomas Fuller ($16,424)
31. Christopher Phillips ($16,424)
32. Gaetano Dimaria ($16,424)
33. Alin Pandilica ($16,424)
34. Webber Kang ($16,424)
35. Jake Cody ($16,424)
36. Ismail Yagci ($16,424)
37. Rory Monahan ($13,264)
38. Matthias Holz ($13,264)
39. Chiab Saechao ($13,264)
40. Bryan Mileski ($13,264)
41. Daniel Gruszka ($13,264)
42. Dimitri Holdeew ($13,264)
43. Steven Firestone ($13,264)
44. Rupinder Bedi ($13,264)
45. Bao Dao ($13,264)
46. Andrew Miles ($10,811)
47. Matthew Mazzeo ($10,811)
48. Colin Padgett ($10,811)
49. Benjamin Shove ($10,811)
50. James Brodie ($10,811)
51. Dirk Heuchert ($10,811)
52. Denis Simard ($10,811)
53. Hoi Lee ($10,811)
54. Cody Slaubaugh ($10,811)
55. Roland Israelashvili ($8,857)
56. Mario Sanchez ($8,857)
57. Ravneet Johal ($8,857)
58. Alexander Millar ($8,857)
59. Claire Renaut ($8,857)
60. Adam Brosiu ($8,857)
61. Hanbing Want ($8,857)
62. Benjamin Dobson ($8,857)
63. David Bonneau ($8,857)
64. Brandon Culbreth ($7,318)
65. Frank Baris ($7,318)
66. Bulat Bikmetov ($7,318)
67. Fayad Ghassan ($7,318)
68. Jack Rosenfeldt ($7,318)
69. Mathias Haller ($7,318)
70. William Nguyen ($7,318)
71. Mario Quijano ($7,318)
72. Felipe Leme ($7,318)
73. Stephen Mckay ($6,071)
74. Rodney Graham ($6,071)
75. Michael Rapier ($6,071)
76. Richard Tucker ($6,071)
77. Roger Tondeur ($6,071)
78. Alexander Kuzmin ($6,071)
79. Frank Labate ($6,071)
80. Bernhard Moessner ($6,071)
81. Scott Meier ($6,071)
82. David Golder ($5,073)
83. David Kristiansen ($5,073)
84. Luigi Petrone ($5,073)
85. Bernardo Da Silveira Dias ($5,073)
86. Robert Wiercinski ($5,073)
87. Daniel Hayden ($5,073)
88. Alfonso Amendola ($5,073)
89. Mohammed Ibrahim ($5,073)
90. Nam Le ($5,073)
91. Beau Baldwin ($4,283)
92. Peter Kaemmerlen ($4,283)
93. Alexander Goulder ($4,283)
94. Farid Vaghefi ($4,283)
95. Juan Manuel Vazquez Moreno ($4,283)
96. David Hadley ($4,283)
97. David Marino ($4,283)
98. David Melius ($4,283)
99. Samantha Cohen ($4,283)
100. Bobby Pham ($3,659)
101. Robert Starkey ($3,659)
102. Soren Turkewitsch ($3,659)
103. Jose Rodriguez ($3,659)
104. Rodney Rogalski ($3,659)
105. Mathieu Viale ($3,659)
106. Ferdinando Locascio ($3,659)
107. Francois Pirault ($3,659)
108. Brad Libson ($3,659)
109. Travis Williams ($3,659)
110. Behzad Tagadfarsa ($3,659)
111. Marcos Arend ($3,659)
112. Andrew Jenkins ($3,659)
113. Shannon Glenesk ($3,659)
114. Devin Looney ($3,659)
115. Travis Atkins ($3,659)
116. Greg Pohler ($3,659)
117. Pablo Gonzalez ($3,659)
118. Marco Muller ($3,659)
119. Dimitrios Karabinis ($3,659)
120. Pralhad Deshpande ($3,659)
121. Yoon Kim ($3,659)
122. Mario Doria ($3,659)
123. Jeremy Paglieri ($3,659)
124. Jeremy Clemons ($3,659)
125. Benjamin Jenkins ($3,659)
126. Santiago Nadal ($3,659)
127. Gerry Terrenal ($3,659)
128. Gregory McCurry ($3,659)
129. Todor Blazevski ($3,659)
130. Christopher Intal ($3,659)
131. Pedro Lopes ($3,659)
132. Bjorn Li ($3,659)
133. Tommy Combs ($3,659)
134. James Daly ($3,659)
135. Joseph Morneau ($3,659)
136. Alphonso Sorhaindo ($3,659)
137. Michael Rushton ($3,659)
138. Walter McCarver ($3,659)
139. Barry Seedman ($3,659)
140. Nicholas Moore ($3,659)
141. Prakash Patel ($3,659)
142. Ronald Lee ($3,659)
143. Marcin Horecki ($3,659)
144. Wesley Deaver ($3,659)
145. Philip A Hughes ($3,659)
146. Ardie Ervin ($3,659)
147. Won Lee ($3,659)
148. Carlos Caro ($3,659)
149. Kyle Ho ($3,659)
150. David Snell ($3,659)
151. Keith Carter ($3,659)
152. Julian Thew ($3,659)
153. Deanna Dozier ($3,659)
154. Roger Simpson ($3,119)
155. JJ Liu ($3,119)
156. Alex Cohen ($3,119)
157. Reto Herrmann ($3,119)
158. Jian Yang ($3,119)
159. Jason Paul ($3,119)
160. Justin Zaki ($3,119)
161. Bradford Albrinck ($3,119)
162. Bodo Sbrzesny ($3,119)
163. Matthew Schultz ($3,119)
164. Mike Heshmati ($3,119)
165. Jon Eaton ($3,119)
166. Ariel Francisco ($3,119)
167. Jim Collopy ($3,119)
168. Phung Ngo ($3,119)
169. Warren Russell ($3,119)
170. Eric Blair ($3,119)
171. Andrew Kloc ($3,119)
172. Nicholas Petrangelo ($3,119)
173. Mark Eddleman ($3,119)
174. Jim Sachinidis ($3,119)
175. Humberto Brenes ($3,119)
176. John Gutierrez ($3,119)
177. Athansios Konstantellos ($3,119)
178. Geoffrey Mulligan ($3,119)
179. Marius Botha ($3,119)
180. Ivan Holmes ($3,119)
181. Luke Robichaud ($3,119)
182. Tom West ($3,119)
183. Marvin Rettenmair ($3,119)
184. Jiachen Gong ($3,119)
185. Kasper Hansen ($3,119)
186. Steve Cha ($3,119)
187. Andrew Thompson ($3,119)
188. Andres Ibarguen ($3,119)
189. Toby Lewis ($3,119)
190. Manami Hayamizu ($3,119)
191. Raymond Scrivens ($3,119)
192. Peter Linton ($3,119)
193. Joseph Pane ($3,119)
194. Francisco Navarro ($3,119)
195. Owen Crowe ($3,119)
196. Marcus Mack ($3,119)
197. Bruce Peery ($3,119)
198. Adam Sanders ($3,119)
199. Jeff Sluzinski ($3,119)
200. Norbero Korn ($3,119)
201. Steven Brown ($3,119)
202. Bjorn Nyman ($3,119)
203. Uri Foox ($3,119)
204. John Patgorski ($3,119)
205. Michael Kamran ($3,119)
206. David Milby ($3,119)
207. Doug Carli ($3,119)
208. Phil Ivey ($3,119)
209. Khang Pham ($3,119)
210. Tony Nguyen ($3,119)
211. Scott Bohlman ($3,119)
212. Davide Suriano ($3,119)
213. Jeancharles Callede ($3,119)
214. Michael Ortner ($3,119)
215. Cherish Andrews ($3,119)
216. Benjamin Beebe ($3,119)
217. Fabien Mathieu ($2,703)
218. Shane Abbott ($2,703)
219. Frank Werder ($2,703)
220. Jefffrey Krueger ($2,703)
221. Angelo Recchia ($2,703)
222. Daniel Bland ($2,703)
223. Stefano Demontis ($2,703)
224. Lewis Robb ($2,703)
225. Harminder Aujla ($2,703)
226. Vitalii Minakov ($2,703)
227. Aleksandr Skorokhod ($2,703)
228. Thiago Rachadel ($2,703)
229. Johnny Iturriria ($2,703)
230. Daniel Butler ($2,703)
231. Brian James ($2,703)
232. John Buglion ($2,703)
233. Lukasz Pazola ($2,703)
234. Peter Sjoberg ($2,703)
235. Gary Herstein ($2,703)
236. Kenneth Felton ($2,703)
237. Shahriar Assareh ($2,703)
238. Joe Serock ($2,703)
239. Duy Le ($2,703)
240. Kevin Vandersmissen ($2,703)
241. Bjorn Arvidssson ($2,703)
242. Michael Peden ($2,703)
243. John Cook ($2,703)
244. Eli Heath ($2,703)
245. Benoit Gariepy ($2,703)
246. Michael Copley ($2,703)
247. Marko Doljevic ($2,703)
248. Dennis Santilli ($2,703)
249. Roy Trickett ($2,703)
250. Michael Zimmer ($2,703)
251. Ronald Thompson ($2,703)
252. Gagandeep Maker ($2,703)
253. Steve Sung ($2,703)
254. Justin Pechie ($2,703)
255. Richard Washinsky ($2,703)
256. Kaan Tasbas ($2,703)
257. Marina Baroco ($2,703)
258. Michael Berra ($2,703)
259. Eusebio Gutierrez ($2,703)
260. Carsten Luxig ($2,703)
261. Stuart Breakstone ($2,703)
262. Sam Grizzle ($2,703)
263. Wade Griffith ($2,703)
264. Claudio Castrogiovanni ($2,703)
265. Jerry Renfroe ($2,703)
266. Phillip Berres ($2,703)
267. Olivier Kocaman ($2,703)
268. Paul Birman ($2,703)
269. Forlan Pinto ($2,703)
270. Michelle Bennett ($2,703)
271. Max Ovseyevitz ($2,703)
272. Gregory Price ($2,703)
273. Dara Okearny ($2,703)
274. Nathan Blankenship ($2,703)
275. Jason Lee ($2,703)
276. Kenneth Shei ($2,703)
277. Jeffrey Bryan ($2,703)
278. Karl Mears ($2,703)
279. Joshua Atkinson ($2,703)
280. Tim Duckworth ($2,370)
281. Kairit Leibold ($2,370)
282. Scott Cook ($2,370)
283. John Boone ($2,370)
284. Robert Jr Durant ($2,370)
285. Niels Nacher ($2,370)
286. Stuart Spear ($2,370)
287. Damien Lhommeau ($2,370)
288. Francois Tosques ($2,370)
289. Tommy Tran ($2,370)
290. Leo Margets ($2,370)
291. Veli-Pekka Penttinen ($2,370)
292. Michael Reisner ($2,370)
293. Johnny A Benehoutsos ($2,370)
294. Timothy Faro ($2,370)
295. Zoltan Kalmar ($2,370)
296. Michael Linster ($2,370)
297. Jason Heiner ($2,370)
298. Jeffrey Abbas ($2,370)
299. Louis Zettelmeier ($2,370)
300. Dan Gannon ($2,370)
301. Azim Popatia ($2,370)
302. Ara Melikian ($2,370)
303. David Sandpearl ($2,370)
304. Henry So ($2,370)
305. Corey Zachary ($2,370)
306. Christopher Spahn ($2,370)
307. Horacio Chaves ($2,370)
308. Erik Hellman ($2,370)
309. Jefri Islan ($2,370)
310. Scott Oreilly ($2,370)
311. Robert Clark ($2,370)
312. Frederic Bouari ($2,370)
313. Anton Kozlovskiy ($2,370)
314. Daniel Gilmer ($2,370)
315. Patrick Girard ($2,370)
316. Chris Platt ($2,370)
317. Theodoros Karidis ($2,370)
318. Anthony Spinella ($2,370)
319. John Seiter ($2,370)
320. Denis Zezyulin ($2,370)
321. Andrew Brussard ($2,370)
322. Terence Rickert ($2,370)
323. Mario Fauceglia ($2,370)
324. Andrew Watson ($2,370)
325. David Stefanski ($2,370)
326. Jonathan Poulin ($2,370)
327. Jason Groelly ($2,370)
328. Luke Brereton ($2,370)
329. Thomas Conway ($2,370)
330. Eugene Kim ($2,370)
331. Huynh Cao ($2,370)
332. Matt Sterling ($2,370)
333. Robert Day ($2,370)
334. Jed Friedman ($2,370)
335. Dominique Franchi ($2,370)
336. Sajid Zia ($2,370)
337. Michael Roche ($2,370)
338. Christopher Edwards ($2,370)
339. Cain Humphrey ($2,370)
340. Arnaud Durif ($2,370)
341. Mahdi Jalil ($2,370)
342. James Waldron ($2,370)
343. Jeffrey Sauer ($2,079)
344. Robert Gipson ($2,079)
345. Yale Greenfield ($2,079)
346. Gabe Costner ($2,079)
347. Benjamin Pisa ($2,079)
348. Romain Chauvassagne ($2,079)
349. Dwight Turnbull ($2,079)
350. Pablo Rojas ($2,079)
351. Patrick Khayat ($2,079)
352. Uri Nir ($2,079)
353. Eric Stocz ($2,079)
354. Nicholas Aubin ($2,079)
355. Andres Pereyra ($2,079)
356. Mohsin Charania ($2,079)
357. Roger Fischer ($2,079)
358. Ron Dunn ($2,079)
359. Sergey Pomerantsev ($2,079)
360. Charles Couvillion ($2,079)
361. Kyung Han ($2,079)
362. Brian Ali ($2,079)
363. Jeremy Ausmus ($2,079)
364. Aske Muff ($2,079)
365. Marc Tschirch ($2,079)
366. Brent Wheeler ($2,079)
367. Jamie Burland ($2,079)
368. Daniel Brenes ($2,079)
369. Hien Tran ($2,079)
370. Jose Chiriboga ($2,079)
371. Yann Del Rey ($2,079)
372. Richard Harroch ($2,079)
373. Eyal Elter ($2,079)
374. Jeremy Menard ($2,079)
375. Wayne Dupreez ($2,079)
376. Kevin Lewhailer ($2,079)
377. Dimitri Perrier ($2,079)
378. Scott Epstein ($2,079)
379. Don Cornwell ($2,079)
380. Andras Stumpf ($2,079)
381. Konstantin Puchkov ($2,079)
382. Michael Reiner ($2,079)
383. Robert Hwang ($2,079)
384. Jeffrey Saunders ($2,079)
385. Jeffrey Mumford ($2,079)
386. Rune Jacobsen ($2,079)
387. Anthony Fox ($2,079)
388. Alexander Tinsley ($2,079)
389. Zachary Korik ($2,079)
390. Steve Gross ($2,079)
391. Rick Whitesell ($2,079)
392. Brian Bond ($2,079)
393. Matthew Schulte ($2,079)
394. Kitson Kho ($2,079)
395. Jozef Hentz ($2,079)
396. Michael Fedyna ($2,079)
397. Sergio Martinez-Ruiz ($2,079)
398. Jonathan Gutierrez ($2,079)
399. Dan Grolemund ($2,079)
400. Lonnie Heimowitz ($2,079)
401. Michael Pfeiffer ($2,079)
402. Remy Gallois ($2,079)
403. Antonio Muro ($2,079)
404. Raymond Brown ($2,079)
405. Alessandro Pizzolotto ($2,079)
406. Clint Lilenthal ($1,830)
407. James Rann ($1,830)
408. Olivier Chaignard ($1,830)
409. Gary Pisarek ($1,830)
410. David Dao ($1,830)
411. Niclas Molgaard ($1,830)
412. Rajest Modha ($1,830)
413. Jessie Covington ($1,830)
414. Stephen Monceau ($1,830)
415. Brittany Love ($1,830)
416. Konstantin Maslak ($1,830)
417. Brendan Nelson ($1,830)
418. Aisling Collins ($1,830)
419. Paul Thomas ($1,830)
420. Simon Borg ($1,830)
421. Roy Finlay ($1,830)
422. Takeo Oishi ($1,830)
423. Patricia Barsantichou ($1,830)
424. Tony Dunst ($1,830)
425. Brian Chilke ($1,830)
426. Craig Bulger ($1,830)
427. Edward Holyoke ($1,830)
428. Karl Donald ($1,830)
429. Vidyadhara Gubbi ($1,830)
430. Victor Olinger ($1,830)
431. Derek Wakamiya ($1,830)
432. Felipe Balaban ($1,830)
433. Michael Savino ($1,830)
434. Piper Arpan ($1,830)
435. Borge Nordal ($1,830)
436. Villamu Amitoelau ($1,830)
437. Johanna Hupfer ($1,830)
438. Kevin Steele ($1,830)
439. John Cynn ($1,830)
440. John Savidis ($1,830)
441. Timothy Stallard ($1,830)
442. Chihao Tsang ($1,830)
443. Louis Asmo ($1,830)
444. Daniel Hargrove ($1,830)
445. Rory Brown ($1,830)
446. Stefano Bertoldi ($1,830)
447. Joseph Ressler ($1,830)
448. Thomas Klaus ($1,830)
449. Joe Weiss ($1,830)
450. Jeffrey Manza ($1,830)
451. Kevin Hong ($1,830)
452. Roger Lehmann ($1,830)
453. Evan Schwartz ($1,830)
454. Dominik Kulicki ($1,830)
455. Alexis Bouchiouane ($1,830)
456. Jeff Madsen ($1,830)
457. Andrew Gilmore ($1,830)
458. Brian Mahoney ($1,830)
459. Jeff Frerichs ($1,830)
460. Alexios Kontos ($1,830)
461. Geoffrey Lay ($1,830)
462. Michael Flanagan ($1,830)
463. Steven Uccio ($1,830)
464. Nick Grippo ($1,830)
465. Justin Copp ($1,830)
466. Daniel Sindelar ($1,830)