My £10m poker face: King of cards reveals his globe-trotting life and insists studying the game is more important than luck

IN his hoodie and faded jeans, you might not give Dominik Nitsche a second glance in the street.

But the 27-year-old has a secret and he’s made millions by knowing how to keep secrets.

Dominik is one of the world’s most successful poker players and reckons he has won “about £10 million” at big-money live tournaments across the globe since he started playing as a teenager.

But despite having the means to live like an international rock star, the quietly-spoken card king prefers a low-key approach.

He insists he is not interested in the world of Ferraris, private jets and five-star hotels.

Instead he lives in a modest Edinburgh flat with his student girlfriend Morgane Portier – and doesn’t even own a car.

“I suppose it is pretty glamorous to gamble for millions and millions of pounds and not worry too much about losing,” Dominik said.

“But I am not the sort of person to waste cash on expensive watches and flash vehicles. I don’t see the point of having a car in Edinburgh as I don’t need one to get around. It would just be an unnecessary expense.”

Dominik, originally from Minden in northern Germany, moved to Scotland’s capital four years ago.

It has proved a lucky city for him. He met and found love with Morgane in Edinburgh and his incredible winning streak shows no signs of slowing up.

Last month Dominik won the World Series of Poker Europe’s One Drop High Roller event in the Czech Republic town of Rozadov.

He took home
£3 million by fighting off competition from the world’s best Texas Hold ’Em players. Dominik also picked up his fourth World Series of Poker gold bracelet along with a massive cash prize.

Two weeks ago he returned to the Czech Republic where he pocketed £88,000 for finishing seventh at a Eurasian Poker Tour event in Prague.

Wherever he is in the world competing, he is happy to get back to his beloved Edinburgh.

“A few years ago I was living in London with a couple of other poker players and they suggested going to see the Edinburgh Festival,” he said. “I fell in love with the city straight away and decided to move there.

“I love the people and the restaurants and it is an easy city to walk in. I can’t see myself living anywhere else.”

Dominik said he was directionless as a young teen and started playing poker with his mates after school at age 16 after seeing it on television.

Within a short space of time it became obvious he was a naturally gifted player and he started cleaning up online, quickly amassing winnings of £2m.

“I had always been interested in things that involve strategic thinking, like chess and video games,” he said. “I realised I could apply this to poker and soon I was making a lot of money playing online.

“Back then it was very easy to win because so many people think they are good at poker but in reality they have little clue what they are doing.

“It was like picking up free money.”

He soon tired of the online world and moved on to bigger and better things.

In 2009, playing in his first live tournament, at 18 he won a Latin American Poker Tour event in Argentina, earning £285,000.

In 2012 he won his first World Series of Poker bracelet, outlasting a field of 4620 in a No Limit Hold ’em tournament – and earned £500,000. Later that same year he won a World Poker Tour title in South Africa. In 2014 Nitsche added a further two WSOP bracelets to his haul of major prizes.

“It only took me a few months to go from being a regular high school student to travelling to and playing in poker tournaments in Australia and South America,” he said.

“Poker is a game played against other people so it is all about how good the competition is. As long as you are playing against people who are worse than you, you can do ok.

“At first the older players dismissed me as being just a lucky kid but now they are scared of me. And the more I win, the more scared they get.

“You don’t get a seat at the big tournaments just by luck and now my reputation is helping me to keep winning. There is a big psychological element to all this.”

Dominik, who is an 888poker ambassador, said the image of poker being a shady gambling game played by sharks in smoky back rooms is long gone.

He has cashed in at tournaments in
22 countries and is a regular visitor to the tables at Las Vegas.

The most he has staked for a seat at a game and walked away empty handed is £225,000.

“I am not scared of losing, I just don’t see things that way,” he said. “If I have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars just to get a seat at a game I will often put half the money up myself, and the rest of the stake comes from investors.

“They get a cut of any winnings but it eases the blow if I lose.”

Much of the secret of his success is his meticulous study of the game.

“I play online every day and study during my downtime,” he has said of his technique. “I don’t need to prepare for one tournament. It’s more important to try to improve at poker in general.

“There are some top quality players in the $300k tournaments that’s for sure, but at the end of the day it’s just about playing poker – so for me, one tournament is the same as any other. And there is an element of luck involved.

“Poker is poker. That’s how you play the game. You see someone playing a hand badly, and then you try and figure out why.

“What is wrong with their thought process? Where did they go wrong? Which concept don’t they understand? Sometimes it can be super obvious.

“Other times it’s a tiny thing.”

Dominik will have a New Year break in Edinburgh with his girlfriend before heading for a tournament in Berlin in January.

Marketing graduate Morgane is no poker widow though. She travels to big games with him and plays a bit herself.

Dominik added: “I have never had a job in my life, and I don’t think I ever will. I love poker. It’s fun.”

The wrong move at the right time? That’s life, I guess

In one of his most famous roles, Steve McQueen played one of the most famous poker hands ever.

McQueen stars as the eponymous Cincinnati Kid in the 1965 movie when his up-and-coming poker player sought to topple The Man, the previously undisputed king of the table, Lancey Howard, played by Edward G Robinson.

In the showdown scene, the pair play no-limit five-card stud in a game that has been loved by movie fans and derided by poker players in equal measure.

Eventually, after drawing an implausibly helpful nine of diamonds and continuing to bet on an apparenty doomed hand, Howard beats The Kid, with a straight flush to his full house. He tells the younger man: “Gets down to what it’s all about, doesn’t it? Making the wrong move at the right time.”

The Kid, stunned, can only ask: “Is that what it’s all about?”

The Man replies: “Like life, I guess.

“Author and passionate poker player Anthony Holden was less than impressed by a scene which he says let down a move that had portrayed the world of the card table.”

He wrote, “In poker terms, the hand is a joke” claiming the odds against Robinson’s hand being “well over 300 billion to 1 against”.

“If these two played 50 hands of stud an hour, five days a week, the situation should arise once every 443 years.”