From 30 Days Behind Bars To Poker MONSTER | Mike Holtz Tells ALL

Mike Holtz thought “Napster” was just a guy in his World of Warcraft group.

It was the guy who created Napster.

They’d been playing together for years. Mike had no idea.

At 17, he was traveling to gaming tournaments with him—with his mom’s permission. Poker was something they played between dungeon raids.

Then the gaming circuit lost its funding.

What followed wasn’t exactly a straight line to the WSOP.

Selling weed. Thirty days in jail. A hotel front-desk job. Then an invitation to a $300 home game with the wealthiest business owners in town.

His boss warned him: these guys were sharks.

Mike won about $1,100.

They invited him back.

He says he won every Tuesday for a year. The poker money was beating the paycheck, and his biggest worry was that they’d stop inviting him.

Vegas proved a little less cooperative.

There were cash-game struggles, a marriage breakdown, and a return to World of Warcraft during COVID. One of his Twitch regulars turned out to be David Williams. Somehow, gaming kept bringing him back to poker.

By 2021, he was chasing WSOP.com Player of the Year.

The guy who used to sleep beside his computer to grind Warcraft rankings had found another leaderboard.

In this episode of The Table 1 Podcast, two-time WSOP bracelet winner and PokerNews Podcast co-host Mike Holtz joins Art Parmann and Justin Young for the stories behind the results:

• ♠️ The family secret that led to a private investigator—and a brother living 30 minutes away
• ♥️ Thirty days in jail, where he already knew half the people inside
• ♦️ Talking the final table into an $11,650-per-person chop with seven big blinds… then busting two hands later
• ♣️ The fake tournament-package story he told his boss to get to Vegas
• ♠️ Turning the online tournament grind into two WSOP.com Player of the Year titles
• ♥️ Why he says his online bracelet was harder to win than his live one
• ♦️ A WSOP rail chant he had to shut down before heads-up
• ♣️ Joining PokerNews, interviewing Maurice Hawkins, and the bracelet-ceremony “apology”

About that apology.

Mike got onstage and said he wanted to apologize to Maurice Hawkins.

“For absolutely nothing.”

Then dropped the mic.

We also get into the two-monitor kitchen-table setup, taking naps with 12 players left, and the coaching videos he keeps winning too much—and procrastinating too hard—to finish.

Probably not the preparation routine you’ll find in a poker textbook.

👇 Drop a comment:
What’s the strangest thing that led you to poker?

Mike’s Links

X: https://x.com/MikeHoltzPoker
IG: https://instagram.com/MikeHoltzPoker

T1 Links

Play with us at Phenom Poker:
https://play.phenompoker.com/register?r=Table1

Play with us at Table 1:
https://table1.vegas

Justin’s Poker Coaching Series:
Learn to Crush Live Poker — https://pokercoaching.com/table1

Follow T1:

X — https://x.com/table1vegas
IG — https://instagram.com/table1vegas