Fedor In Forbes!

(Photo: Youtube.com)

Fedor Holz has had an extraordinary run in the last few years: at just 24 years old, he’s got over $23.3 million in live tournament cashes, a WSOP bracelet, and a jet setting lifestyle that would make a diplomatic courier jealous – 200+ flights last year alone.

While it is clear that the Saarbrücken raised Austrian resident has been on the receiving end of the rungood to end all rungoods, it is also impossible to deny his hard work and talent which have allowed him to cash that success in for poker chips, camera time, and starting capital for his business ventures a life coaching app, which he claims is about getting your head in the right place for his kind of success – results, one imagines, are not guaranteed.

(Photo: WSOP.com)

Forbes Comes Calling

The curious combinations of the youthful rich, the itinerant gambler, and the Silicon start-up attracted the attention of the mainstream. Darren Heitner, Forbes contributor and author of How to Play the Game: What Every Sports Attorney Needs to Know, hunted Holz down – perhaps in his new home of Austria, perhaps in transit between one High Roller festival or other, to interview him for the magazine, either way they had a chat and the result is a pleasing bit of publicity for the game.

If you’re really interested in how someone learns to play at that level at such a young age, Holz also opens up about his autodidactic methods in the interview. Talking about forums like 2+2 and group studies on Skype. For good measure.

The Greatly Exaggerated Death

He is less positive about the state of online poker.

"I think live poker is the main thing that should be focused on. There's way more to be done there,” he says, explaining that he thinks “online the game is reaching a point where it will be solved with computers progressing, and I don't think the lifespan will be much longer. It's not going to die, but you can already see the online high stakes action is drying up quite a bit”

While the death of online poker has been predicted for a long time, one can’t help but feel Holz’s view may well be skewed by the nosebleed stakes he plays at. Live poker has plenty of draw in high stakes games where the rake is much lower as a percentage of what is paid.

But the odd article like that can’t hurt the game.