Recently, WSOP in New Jersey ran the Mini Fest of Poker, which featured a variety of small buy-in tournaments. A leaderboard competition was part of this series, which awarded the top ten players WSOP gear and tournament tickets. When all was said and done, Dale GratefulD3adHolzer (pictured, ranked 73rd in New Jersey) won the competition, accumulating 114 points, which he earned by cashing in six events. Visit PocketFives’ New Jersey pokercommunity for the latest news and discussion from New Jersey players.

PocketFives: Congrats on winning the leaderboard competition. Tell us how you are feeling.

Dale Holzer: I was very happy to hear about the Mini Fest series. I am a very competitive person and figured I had a shot at taking it down from the beginning if things went my way. I have played against most of the field for a while now and have good notes on a lot of players. To be honest, I really wanted to rock that hoodie that was only offered for first place.

PocketFives: What was your impression of the Mini Fest series overall?

Dale Holzer: I thought the Mini Fest series was a great idea and an overall success for the community. It certainly gave me an incentive to participate in most of the games over the month of February. It provided a variety of games.

PocketFives: Did you play in all 28 events or did you pick and choose which events to play?

Dale Holzer: I don’t remember the exact number that I played in, but if I had to guess, I would say about 80% of them. The other 20% of the time I was probably out for wings and beer with my buddies who work a normal schedule.

PocketFives: What was your most memorable win or cash while playing in it?

Dale Holzer: If I had to choose one of the events, I would go with Event #4, which was a $2 Rebuy. I was able to take over chip lead with about 30 players left and not relinquish it for the rest of the game. I put on the maximum amount of pressure around the bubble when players were beginning to play tight in order to make the money. I was lucky enough to open a 200,000-chip lead and was able to run over the final table quite easily.

PocketFives: Which event was the most difficult to get through?

Dale Holzer: Hands-down, the toughest event was the Main Event, which was a $20 Rebuy. Any time the buy-in increases, it is going to attract tougher players.

PocketFives: Anything else you would like to add?

Dale Holzer: I am a huge advocate for freezeout games and would love to see all of the games from 888 Poker merged with the WSOP schedule. The few games that have been moved to both skins have been doing tremendously well and I’m sure the rest would follow suit. I do believe that WSOP can and should run another $10 R&A $5,000 guarantee that starts a few hours earlier. This provides an opportunity for players who aren’t capable of staying up until the early hours of the morning because of work-related issues.

I would like to give a shout out to the other PocketFivers who gave me a run for my money: IamDewman, jp1979, mikewebb68, and odi420. Looking forward to the next series and taking down Ollie (TheRealOD) again!