Nitsche’s Niche

The young German player Dominik Nitsche won another WSOP bracelet last night in Event No. 21, a $1,000 no-limit hold’em event. That makes three for him as he just won the WSOP National Championship a few weeks ago (which counts as a bracelet event), and he’d won his first back in 2012 in another $1,000 NLHE tourney.

I was there two years ago to help cover Nitsche’s first bracelet win. That one had a big field of 4,620 take part -- it was one of the last events of the summer. I remember it had originally been scheduled as a four-day event. There were 51 players who came back for Day 3, and Nitsche blitzed through so quickly they were able to end a day early. He picked up a lot of big hands at that final table, I also recall, which helped hasten things at the end.

Nitsche bested another big field of 2,043 to win last night. Looking back through the coverage, the heads-up portion of play provided some interesting moments, including some good fortune for Nitsche on more than one occasion.

Dave D’Alesandro was Nitsche’s heads-up opponent, and he enjoyed about a 2.5-to-1 chip lead as they began. They’d end up playing about 90 hands, with Nitsche doubling up no less than four times before grabbing the advantage and then eventually knocking D’Alesandro out the first time the latter was all in and at risk.

The first of those double-ups was the most fortunate for Nitsche as he’d committed with 10-9-suited versus D’Alesandro’s A-Q and hit a ten on the river to survive.

Nitsche’s obviously a talented no-limit hold’em tourney player -- aside from these three WSOP wins, he has tons of other results totaling more than $3.7 million. He also has both an LAPT title and a WPT title, too, so when he eventually gets around to winning an EPT they’ll have to invent a name for the feat (the Quadruple Crown?). And no, to reprise yesterday’s topic, none of the 25K Fantasy teams drafted him.

He’s just 23 years old, and in fact wins a third bracelet some three years faster than Phil Ivey did, who had gotten to three faster than anyone previous to Nitsche. The fortunate flips and all-ins last night highlight what is likely a facile observation that variance has been kind to Nitsche in his brief WSOP career thus far.

That said, he’s put himself in good positions for good things to happen a whole lot already, and has found a niche of sorts at the WSOP, too.

2012 WSOP, Day 42: Chips in Play

So yesterday my blogging partner Daniel and I arrived at the Rio thinking we’d probably be looking at a relatively short day. We were covering Day 3 of Event No. 59, a $1,000 no-limit hold’em event, in which 51 players were left from a huge field of 4,620. The schedule called for them either to play 10 one-hour levels or down to a final table of nine, and by our guesstimates we figured the latter much more likely.

Before wandering over to our event, I took a peek at the start of the Main Event over in the Amazon. The rail was packed with onlookers (see picture), and it appeared most of the tables in Amazon were filled, too. I then moved down to the Pavilion and by 1 p.m. Daniel and I were scrambling to chronicle all the knockouts and track who was surviving in our event.

As it turned out, we were both right and wrong with our start-of-day predictions.

We were right about the field shrinking down to nine in short order -- in fact, they’d get there by the end of the sixth level played yesterday. But we were wrong about that making for a short day, as tourney staff decided to play 10 one-hour levels, anyway, then have whoever was left come back on Sunday to finish the sucker out.

Thanks to a dominating performance by the young German, Dominik Nitsche, at the final table -- aided in part by a timely rush of cards (including pocket kings twice, pocket jacks, and pocket nines, all of which scored knockouts) -- they were able to make it all of the way to the end last night, with Nitsche ultimately outlasting Jonathan Hilton to take his first bracelet.

I remembered Nitsche from that trip down to Marrakech, Morocco in late 2010 where he’d final tabled the WPT event that year. A strong player and a friendly guy, and it was nice to see him grab the bracelet and celebrate with the large group of supporters who were there at the end. (That’s Nitsche with his back to the camera, getting hugged.)

As it turned out, then, we were in the Pavilion for something over 13 hours or so, following our preliminary event to its conclusion while the Main Event got going down the hall. Looking at the stack sizes, I guess it wasn’t all that surprising to have seen them get from 51 players down to just one in a single day as they did, but it still seemed kind of remarkable.

Got me thinking about those 13,860,000 chips in play for Event No. 59 and how they were divided. When play began the average stack was around 27 big blinds, which was small enough to ensure eliminations would be coming at a rapid clip. That average stack would gradually increase (relative to the blinds) as the day wore on to close to 40 BBs by the time the final table started, then came a wild level in which six players went out in an hour, five of them knocked out by Nitsche, to help them cruise toward a conclusion.

Despite our Day 4 getting canceled for Event No. 59, I’ll still be at the Rio today helping out with the Main Event coverage before getting a couple of days rest. Looks like they drew 1,066 players for yesterday’s Day 1a, and as I mentioned yesterday it sounds like expectations are to get more today and a lot more on Monday for the third and final Day 1 flight.

Will be good to look in on the Day 1 action, which often brings out some characters and side stories that help make the Main Event different from any other tournament. The super-deep stacks and slow structure will necessarily mean a much slower pace of play than what I saw yesterday, of course, with players starting 300 BBs deep and those making it to the end of Day 1 with an average of more than 120 BBs or so.

Follow along over at PokerNews to see where the 200 million or so chips end up going at the Main Event.