How was your holiday season? Good? Get some nice gifts? Yeah? Nice!
Even if you are thrilled with that $200 Kylo Ren lightsaber, your holiday pales in comparison to that of one Fedor Holz. The 22-year old German entered his Christmas break with a win in the final World Poker Tour (WPT) Alpha8 event of the year and now just started off the New Year with another victory in a high roller event: the Triton Super High Roller Series Cali Cup.
The Alpha8 Las Vegas at the Bellagio wrapped up on December 20th as Holz topped the 45-player field of the $100,000 buy-in tournament to win $1,589,219. He took a little break for the holidays and then went right back to work this past weekend at a little known WPT event (classified as a “special” event on WPT.com) called the Triton Super High Roller Series Cali Cup.
Contrary to how its name makes it sound, the Cali Cup was not held in California, but rather at the Solaire Resort and Casino in Manila, Phillipines (it was the lead-in to the WPT National event at the same venue this week). The buy-in was $200,000, the largest ever for a World Poker Tour event. 39 unique players entered with 52 total registrations because of re-entries. Holz won $3,463,500, giving him about $5,000,000 in winnings for his last two events and $7.2 million for his career.
“It’s so unreal. I was so close so many times [before WPT Alpha8],” Holz told WPT officials after the tournament. “It makes it even more special when you play against the best and win.”
No doubt. The huge buy-in would lead one to believe that the tournament was populated by the best of the best, but when you see names like Daniel Colman, Steve O’Dwyer, Phil Ivey, Paul Phua, and Mike McDonald in the money, you realize how truly difficult the field was (the final table was six-handed, though the payouts went down to eight places).
Holz is also very accomplished on the internet poker side of the equation. Known as “CrownUpGuy” online, he won the 2014 PokerStars PokerStars WCOOP Main Event, beating Faraz “The-Toilet” Jaka and Viktor “Isildur1” Blom at the final table.
It would not be surprising if Holz did not keep all of the millions he has recently won. He endeared himself to the poker community in 2013 when he launched a charity drive on the Two Plus Two message board. His goal was to play NL500 Zoom Poker on PokerStars for 20 days straight and donate half his winnings to charity. He posted status updates in the forum and pledged to match anyone’s donations 100 percent up to $20,000. He ended up raising $45,834.18 for Casa Esperanza in Chile, which he said was , “a house for children who have lost their families or grown up in absolute poverty.”
2016 Triton Super High Roller Series Cali Cup – Final Results
1. Fedor Holz – $3,463,500
2. David Peters – $2,309,000
3. Devan Tang – $1,405,000
4. Steve O’Dwyer – $953,700
5. Phil Ivey – $656,500
6. Dan Colman – $502,000
7. Paul Phua – $401,600
8. Mike McDonald – $351,320