German Pro Heineckerragen Wins $4.5m In Macau

German high-stakes pro Niklas “ragen70” Heineckerragen has just enjoyed the greatest day of his poker career, after taking down the HK $1m ($130,000) GuangDong Ltd Asia Millions (GDAM) Main Event for a massive HK$34.6m (US$4,464,516).
The $130,000 buy-in tournament took place at The City of Dreams Entertainment Resort in Macau, China, and attracted 71 top competitors, 54 of whom reloaded during the event, to create a prize pool worth HK$119m ($15.4m). At the end of three days of high-stakes action, it was the 28-year-old German NLHE specialist who walked away with the incredible score but, despite being described by Mike “Timex” McDonald, as, “probably one of the top five poker players in the world,” Heineckerragen still admitted to being awed by the event. As he commented after his victory:
“Of course, this is just sick. This is by far the biggest day of my poker career..I don’t think this is business as usual for anyone, and not for me definitely. It’s far from what I’m used to. It’s a really big thing.”
On his way to winning the title, Niklas Heineckerragen had to overcome a tough final table of eight, which included the likes of Sorel Mizzi, Isaac Haxton, Igor Kurganov and Zheng Tang. Eventually, Niklas Heinecker would subsequently take a 3 to 1 chip advantage over Jeff Rossiter into the heads- up phase of the competition.
The final battle was then short with Rossiter all-in preflop holding Q-10 to his opponent’s A-9, with the board rolling out K-5-4-3-J to hand Heineckerragen the title.
The final table payouts were as follows:
1 Niklas Heinecker $4,464,516
2 Jeff Rossiter       $3,161,290
3 Sorel Mizzi       $2,077,419
4 Zheng Tang       $1,616,129
5 Isaac Haxton       $1,316,129
6 Igor Kurganov    $1,070,967
7 Anson Tsang       $922,580
8 Pratyush Budigga $774,193