1.3 Million Euro Retirement Present for Fedor Holz!

(Photo: Flickr.com)

If Fedor Holz has retired then he’s doing a very bad job at it, the German sensation scooping a cool €1.3 million for winning the €50K Super High Roller at Barcelona’s EPT this weekend!

Less than two months ago the wunderkind topped the $10 million mark for the half year, but seemed jaded when he stated:

"Do I spend my time on the right things whether that’s poker or anything else in life? It’s a very important question for me.”

(Photo: Cardplayer.com)

The Barcelona stop on the European Poker Tour, however, was always part of his plans despite the thoughts of scaling back his poker involvement, and he proved once again that he’s the man to beat in the biggest events when he saw off the challenge of Sam Greenwoodheads-up to lift the tile and the massive cash prize.

102 players had stumped up the big €50K buy-in and when the final table of 9 was set Holz also had to face the likes of defending EPT Barcelona Super High Roller champion and former November Niner Sylvain Loosli and Erik Seidel.

Seidel was the odd-man-out when Holz and fellow German Rainer Kempe squeezed him out of the Super High Roller Bowl top 2 a few months back, and this time the American poker legend came in as short-stack and left very early-5 hands in and his pocket nines failed to improve in a multi-way pot.

Holz, however, despite his youth, has always displayed a maturity to go along with his incredible talent and knowledge of the game and played a clever game, watching on as Sam Greenwood accounted for many of the fallers.

The dangerous rival Loosli, though, was accounted for by Holz himself – the German picking up ace-king which proved too much for the Frenchman’s pocket 8’s.

Holz’s ‘retirement speech’ had included:

"The thing is, this freedom of just saying no I don’t want to play for the next four months is important. I have not had that before. In the past four years, I have taken two vacations off. There has been no relaxing, orientation. I had this goal, and I always set new goals until I got where I am.”

His goal when heads-up against Greenwood seemed to be not to lose a significant pot and instead chip away at the Canadian, ultimately forcing him to take a punt with a less-than-premium hand to stop the rot. Again it was big slick which sealed the deal, Greenwood’s 45 suited improving to draws but finally missing out on the river.

And so the German superstar has boosted his year’s earnings to more than $12million and his lifetime tournament winnings are just over $30K shy of $20million! Of course, when you have such riches you can afford to decry them – Holz stating last month that:

"Money is overvalued, and freedom has very little to do with money. We always think that money is connected to how we feel but it’s a very short-term feeling and what I have learned through coaching, and giving back to people, I realized that this is the only thing that gives me joy,” adding, “That’s why poker is not the thing I want to pursue. It only takes. It’s very selfish. There is no lasting place for it in my life to do this for a living.”

For the moment, however, he seems to be enjoying poker again – and who can blame him!