Super High Roller Dominik Nitsche has won the first Unibet Open of 2021 after taking down the online Main Event for €68,527.
Nitsche, who is based in Edinburgh and was playing under the username “limingwei”, won the €1,100 buy-in tourney after beating a 319-entry field, including a plethora of Unibet Ambassadors. A total of 290 unique players took part, with a further 29 rebuys bringing the prize pool up to €334,950 – way over the €250,000 guarantee.
He said: “I really enjoyed the tournament. It’s really nice to be able to play a big tournament these days since I kinda miss competing in the big live stuff. So thanks to Unibet for putting this on – and I hope this is an event that we’ll see again in the future before we get back to playing to live poker. I also want to give a shoutout to my friends Dara “Doke” O’Kearney and David Lappin who I crossed paths with in the tournaments. Unluckily for them, they didn’t know who I was!”
Nitsche, who has more than $18 million in live tournament winnings to his name along with $5 million plus in online earnings, is a four-time WSOP bracelet winner. The 30-year-old first started playing poker after watching it on TV and was the youngest player in the world to win three WSOP bracelets. He first hit the spotlight when was just 19, winning LAPT Mar del Plata in 2009. That $381,030 score was his first live tournament result but his biggest cash came in 2017 when he took down the WSOPE High Roller for One Drop for €3,487,463.
Nitsche, who co-founded the popular GTO training app DTO Poker Trainer in 2019, has featured several times on Dara O’Kearney and David Lappin’s award-winning podcast The Chip Race including Season 9, Season 10 and The Lock-In last October.
Day 2 started on Monday with just 66 players left in the field, led by BunnyFunny who eventually cashed in 16th place. Unibet Ambassador Dara O’Kearney finished in 20th place for €3,128. A total of 44 players made the money with a min-cash worth €2,264.
The Unibet Open events marked a spectacular end to the €1 million guaranteed Unibet Online Series which comprised 145 different tournaments. As well as the €250,000 guaranteed Unibet Open Main Event, other flagship Unibet Open tourneys included last Wednesday’s Unibet Opener which was won by “GirlPower14” for €4,168 while UNSTUCKMAC beat a 171-entry field to take down the £15k Unibet Open Warm-Up for €4,097. The winner of the two-day £50,000 guarantee Unibet Open rebuy tourney was MikaH80 who snagged €12,956 after outlasting a huge 675-entry field. Across the whole Unibet Online Series, there were nearly 26,000 entrants creating an overall prize pool of €1,174,485.
The Unibet Open tour switched from IRL to URL back in May last year. Top British poker pro Max Silver was the first Unibet Online champion, winning the Main Event for €77,320. Irishman Padraig O’Neill then made history by taking down the next two Unibet Open Online events back-to-back. In October, he won €79,998 and a few months later snagged another €52,622. He qualified for both events in €50 satellites on Unibet Poker.
Unibet Ambassador Ian Simpson said: “I’m delighted for Dom for winning the Unibet Open Online! I’ve listened to him on The Chip Race and he comes across as friendly and erudite. He’s put a lot of hard work into poker, and that hard work has paid off for him by taking down our event. I’m already working on the satellites to win my seat for our next event! The dates will be announced in the coming months so stay tuned on Twitch!”
Unibet Ambassador David Lappin said: “Dara crushed myself and Ian in the Series, making three Day 2s. Both he and Ian won an event while I had 11 top ten finishes. Overall, Dara and I have both made the leaderboard top 10 but STILL NO MAIN EVENT VICTORY! It’s been fun though and the Main Event totally smashed the guarantee; it’s great to see so many people taking part.”
Nataly Sopacuaperu, Unibet’s Head of Events, said: “Wow to Dominik Nitscshe – what an amazing player! This was a fantastic victory and a great start to the 2021 Unibet Open festivals. We look forward to many more great tournaments on Unibet Poker this year and hope everyone who took part enjoyed the first Unibet Online Series.”
Main featured image pic credit: Katerina Lukina / King‘s Resort
