Pius Heinz (born 4 May 1989) is a German professional

poker Poker is a family of comparing card games in which players wager over which hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, however in some places the rules may vary. While the earliest known form of the game w ...

player from

Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr r ...

, best known as the winner of the

Main Event In sports, a card lists the matches taking place in a title match combat-sport event. Cards include a main event match and the undercard listing the rest of the matches. The undercard may be divided into a midcard and a lower card, according to ...

at the

2011 World Series of Poker The 2011 World Series of Poker was the 42nd annual World Series of Poker (WSOP). The WSOP is the most prestigious poker tournament in the world with the winner of the Main Event considered to be the World Champion. It was held at the Rio All Suit ...

. He is the first German player to capture the Main Event

bracelet A bracelet is an article of jewellery that is worn around the wrist. Bracelets may serve different uses, such as being worn as an ornament. When worn as ornaments, bracelets may have a wikt:supportive, supportive function to hold other items of ...

. He defeated Czech player Martin Staszko to win the event. On the final hand, Heinz's defeated Staszko's , which did not improve on a board of . Heinz was a member of

Team PokerStars A team is a group of individuals (human or non-human) working together to achieve their goal. As defined by Professor Leigh Thompson of the Kellogg School of Management, " team is a group of people who are interdependent with respect to info ...

Personal life

Heinz was born in

and raised in the village of

Odendorf Odendorf is a village in Germany, located in the municipality of Swisttal in the Rhein-Sieg district of North Rhine-Westphalia. The village is situated approximately southwest of Bonn. As of 2007, the village had 3,581 inhabitants. Local busine ...

, Germany. He studied Business Psychology at the Hochschule Fresenius college in

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western States of Germany, state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 m ...

, which he put on hold in August 2011 to pursue his poker career as a part of Team Pokerstars. He is currently living in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

Poker

Heinz started playing poker after watching the Main Event and

High Stakes Poker ''High Stakes Poker'' is an American cash game poker television program. The poker variant played on the show is no limit Texas hold 'em. The first four seasons ran from January 16, 2006 to December 17, 2007 on GSN. The next three seasons ran fr ...

on German TV. After playing a few games with his friends, he decided that poker was a game of skill and immersed himself in studying the subject. He proceeded to win over $700,000 online. Heinz won a Full Tilt Poker Sunday Mulligan in 2010 and a PokerStars $150,000 tournament in 2011. Having developed his style online, he discovered that he "did not have a lot of experience playing live ... The live game is pretty boring and you need a lot of patience." He cashed once during his first 15 WSOP events, finishing in 7th place in the $1,500 No Limit Hold‘em event, which garnered him $83,286. That was his first ever live tournament cash. Because of the size of the field, the first day of the WSOP Main Event is split over a four-day period. Heinz registered for day 1-A so that he "could get out of there and go home as soon as possible" if he was eliminated. During the final table, his mother, who was watching the event, had left the Penn & Teller Theater because she found the tournament too stressful.

References

External links

PocketFives profile
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Heinz, Pius 1989 births German poker players World Series of Poker Main Event winners World Series of Poker bracelet winners People from Rhein-Sieg-Kreis Sportspeople from Cologne (region) Living people