Niklas “ragen70″ Heinecker Becomes Biggest Online Poker Earner

November 19, 2013

Step aside Tom Dwan and Viktor Blom, there’s a new world leader for biggest online earner for 2013, a seemingly lucky year for one young poker pro. The 2013 total online earnings for 28-year-old German player Niklas “ragen70” Heinecker recently surpassed $4.19 million, making him the biggest online poker earner of the year. And what’s even more impressive is that Heinecker only started playing seriously in May, grinding on Full Tilt. By August he was in the red, but now only about three months later, he’s one of the richest poker players in the world.

Not only has he been busy online, but he’s also a live poker winner as well. Back in June in Macau, he won the HK$1 GuangDong Asia Millions and won a whopping US$4.5 million (HK$34.6m). His live plus online earnings for the year total more than $8.7 million, making it one the best years for any poker player ever.

One of the biggest pots Heinecker won as of late was a $403K pot. He’s been a force at the 6-max NLHE tables, as well as the Triple Draw tables, and the 2-7 Triple Draw games as well. Last Thursday he took $573K after just five and a half hours on eight tables of $2K/$4K 2-7 Triple Draw.

Heinecker lives in the UK and is a student of economic mathematics, which he says helps him better understand poker. He first got into poker with some friends, and after a lot of practice, he eventually entered the 2007 WSOP Main Event, in which he took 80th place. Since then, he’s had two first place cashes, the Macau event mentioned above, and the $5,100 NLH Heads-Up Championship at the 2012 LA Poker Classic in Los Angeles, a tourney that paid him just over $46K.

But no year has been quite like this one for him. He kicked off his wonder year back in February with a $89K+ win at the $25K NLH $25K Challenge at the 2013 Aussie Millions Poker Championship in Melbourne.

Fellow German, poker pro, and friend of Heinecker, Philipp Gruissem, is not to be overlooked by Heinecker’s big wins. He recently won first place and $4.6+ million at the WPT Alpha8 St. Kitts.

Other German players that follow the international circuit with Heinecker and Gruissem include Fabian Quoss, Igor Kurganov, and Tobias Reinkemeier. They have sort of created their own German poker team and have all been successful, due in part to their support for each other.

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