The World Series of Poker National Championship crowned its first ever non-US winner on Saturday, Dominik Nitsche (pictured), who is known as bounatirouIMO here on PocketFives. The German raced through a field of 126 players for the win and collected $352,000 along with the first gold bracelet awarded this year. Prior to Saturday, no European had ever final tabled the National Championship.

WSOP.com narrated another superlative Nitsche set: “He is also the first winner of the National Championship to come from the pool of players who are eligible to buy into the event for $10,000 based on their results over the past two years of WSOP play. In the three years the option has been available, it was the Circuit qualifiers who took home the title. That changed this year, as the top three finishers were all bracelet winners.”

Nitsche is over $2 million in career WSOP earnings and won his first two years ago in a $1,000 No Limit Hold’em tournament that attracted over 4,600 entrants. His bracelet that year was worth $654,000 and he finished third in last year’s WSOP Europe Main Event for $545,000. Those two scores, along with Saturday’s bracelet win, represent Nitsche’s only three WSOP final tables.

Heads-up, Nitsche defeated fellow bracelet winner and PocketFiver Athanasios Athanasios 9 Polychronopoulos (pictured), who earned $218,000. Polychronopoulos won bracelets last year and in 2011 in $1,500 No Limit Hold’em events.

Nitsche told WSOP officials following his second bracelet win, “It’s always nice to win a tournament, especially in a tough field like here. Athanasios is an amazing player and we played heads-up for quite some time. Beating him feels extra sweet because he is such a good player, even though we’re friends. It’s always extra sweet if you beat someone who’s really strong.”

Third place in the talented field went to Matthew Ashton, who won last year’s Poker Player’s Championship at the WSOP for $1.7 million. Ashton now has a half-dozen WSOP final tables under his belt and entered six-handed play in the National Championship with 119 big blinds, 40 more than the next closest player. Nitsche had the third largest stack at 29 big blinds, but built a 2:1 lead by the time heads-up play began.

Here were the final nine players in the WSOP National Championship:

1. Dominic bounatirouIMONitsche – $352,800
2. Athanasios Athanasios 9 Polychronopoulos – $218,056
3. Matthew Ashton – $157,399
4. Christopher Bibb – $115,655
5. Tracy Doss – $86,461
6. Andrew Arobinson11 Robinson – $65,734
7. Ylon Schwartz – $50,816
8. Jeffrey Gunnip – $39,917
9. Sean Lippel – $31,865

The 2014 WSOP starts on Tuesday. Keep it tuned to PocketFives for the latest WSOP coverage.

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