PLAYER PROFILE – Fedor Holz
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Fedor Holz the “German Wunderkind”
As a professional poker player, Fedor Holz is considered to be one of the best poker tournament players in the world. He has earned more than $33.5 million in live poker tournaments and millions more playing poker online. He is the best German player and has been amongst the top 20, and as high as 4th, most successful poker players, in terms of live tournament prize money, since 2015. Holz had his first major successes online, winning the World Championship of Online Poker Main Event in 2014 and being ranked number one in the online poker world rankings for a total of 3 weeks. In 2015 he continued to be a rising star in the world of live poker and in 2016 he won his first bracelet at the World Series of Poker and jumped to first place in the live poker world rankings, which he held for 30 weeks. Holz is the only player to have topped the world poker rankings for both online and live poker games. In June 2019 he was named as one of the 50 greatest players in poker history. He won his second bracelet at the World Series of Poker Online in 2020. It was due to his successes at a young age that Fedor Holz earned the nickname ‘German Wunderkind’.
Holz grew up with his siblings near Saarbrücken, Germany. As a child he played chess and qualified for the German championships. At school, Holz passed his Abitur at the age of 17 from the Theodor-Heuss-Gymnasium in Sulzbach. He then began studying media informatics at Saarland University but dropped out after two semesters. In 2013, Holz left home to travel the world and ended up moving to Vienna where he lives with his partner, a food blogger and influencer Annelina Waller.
Fedor, as of the end of the 2022 WSOP, sits 13th on the all time money list with $33.655.809 in live poker tournament cashes. His biggest single cash came at the 2018 WSOP Big One for One Drop when he finished second and earned $6.000.000, narrowly missing a World Series of Poker Gold Bracelet, keeping his total at 2.
Holz was introduced to poker at the age of 16 by two close friends. From the start of his poker career he spent a lot of time exchanging ideas with other players on the various forums and cites intensity, passion and his personal network as the keys to his success. His network consists of Steffen Sontheimer, Rainer Kempe and Koray Aldemir, all of whom are among the most successful German poker players
On February 10, 2013 he won his first major live tournament at the Lebanese Poker Tour in Cyprus and followed this, just 9 days later with a 10th place finish at the World Poker Tour (WPT) Austrian Poker Festival. By the end of 2013, Holz had earned nearly $150,000 in live tournament prize money.
In August 2014, Holz cashed five times at the European Poker Tour (EPT) in Barcelona, including at the Main Event, the High Roller tournament and winning a preliminary No Limit Hold’em tournament. He had earned over €100,000 in just eleven days, almost the same amount he won through the end of 2013 playing at live poker tournaments. In late September 2014, Holz won the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) Main Event on PokerStars earning $1.3 million USD after a 6-way deal. In a large part due to his success in the WCOOP Main Event, in December 2014 Holz spent a week in the top spot on the PocketFives ranking, a ranking of the most successful online tournament players. He would regain the top spot again in March 2015 for 2 weeks.
In early May 2015, Holz scooped his two biggest live cashes of his career to date, finishing 7th and 4th in two EPT Super High Roller events in Monte Carlo. In a span of 3 days he managed to reach the final table of both events and won around €330,000 from each poker tournament. In June 2015, Holz, who was now 21 years old, was allowed to compete in the World Series of Poker (WSOP) in Las Vegas for the first time. He cashed 4 times during the series. Fedor managed a third place in the No Limit Hold’em Six Handed Championship, finishing behind Doug Polk and Byron Kaverman, for nearly $270,000. In the main event, Holz reached the seventh day of the tournament and won over $260,000, finishing 25th from the original field of 6,420. His strong play continued and In October he made a final table at the WSOP Europe, held in Berlin. Fedor cashed twice in total throughout the World Series of Poker Europe that year.
Mid-December 2015, things changed drastically. On December 18th, Holz won the WPT’s Alpha8 event at the Hotel Bellagio in Las Vegas, earning over $1.5 Million USD. With that victory, Fedor Holz managed to earn nearly $3.5 Million in live poker tournament prizes over the course of 2015. He held 5th spot on the Global Poker Index Player of the Year rankings for his achievements and was named Europe’s Player of the Year 2015 at the European Poker Awards in Monte-Carlo.
Finishing the year with a tournament win like the Alpha8 is great. Starting the year on a victory like that is even better, and that’s what Fedor did. On January 3rd, just 16 days after his Alpha8 victory, he won the Triton Super High Roller Tournament and earned over $3 Million, almost as much as he had won the previous year playing live poker tournaments.
On July 1, 2016, Holz won the $111,111 buy-in High Roller for One Drop, the most expensive event at the 2016 WSOP. He beat a field of 182 players, winning a gold bracelet and $5,000,000, the biggest prize of his career to date and 2nd largest lifetime.
He won his 2nd bracelet at the Online WSOP Heads Up Event earning $1,077,025 from a field of 127 Players that took place on GGPoker.
What will the future hold for this incredible poker tournament specialist? We can only speculate, but we cannot wait to see what is next for the German Wunderkind.
