It wasn’t that long ago that Fedor Holz, a 22-year-old German poker pro, was considering retirement from the professional live tournament poker grind after his exceptional run during this summer’s WSOP series. This didn’t prevent him from returning to the felt of the European Poker Tour in Barcelona to participate in the €50,000 Super High Roller.
Fedor “CrownUpGuy” Holz continued his good run in high roller and super high roller tournaments in recent times, outlasting a field of 102 entries to win €1,300,300 ($1,471,485 USD). This last year in particular has been especially good to the German phenom, Holz began the year with a bang by winning the WPT Philippines $200,000 Super High Roller to claim the amount of $3,463,500. He’s made several final tables since in 2016, capping the summer off by winning the $111,111 One Drop High Roller for $4,981,775. This latest EPT score means he has now amassed close to $20 million in lifetime live tournament earnings.
PokerListings spoke to EPT commentator Joe Stapleton, and this is what Fedor had to say in the winner’s interview, “I come out once every three months and play a little.” Surprisingly, despite this latest seven-figure score, he maintained that he will not be playing a great deal of poker in the future.
2016 EPT Barcelona €50,000 SHR Final Table
Holz’s final table appearance at the EPT Barcelona €50,000 Super High Roller saw him come up against Sam Greenwood, Timothy Adams, Alexandros Kolonias, Sylvain Loosli, Ahadpur Khangah, Erik Seidel, Daniel Dvoress and Julian Stuer. The final table action lasted more than 5 hours, and for the most part consisted of Fedor outplaying his opponents and running well when needed.
Heads up play started with Fedor Holz and Sam Greenwood both about even in chips at the time. Greenwood was a gold bracelet winner last year in a $1k No Limit Hold’em event, but he couldn’t draw on that experience to claim his second major title. It wasn’t long into the heads up battle before the German high roller regular established a chip lead that he would never let go.
In the final hand of the tournament Greenwood shoved with 5-6 suited and Holz made the call with A-K. A king came on the flop, which gave Holz a lock on the hand, although Greenwood was drawing to a gutshot straight. The turn improved his chances, giving him an open-ended straight draw, but Greenwood bricked the river, departing with €903,600 ($1,022,559 USD) as the runner-up.
2016 EPT Barcelona €5,300 Main Event
Action continues at Casino Barcelona with the commencement of the EPT Barcelona €5,300 Main Event, which is the first for season 13. The field consists of many EPT regulars, including Steve O’Dwyer, Stephen Chidwick, Faraz Jaka, Dario Sammartino, Daniel Negreanu and Martin Jacobson in what is a record breaking EPT Main Event ever to date.