With no recorded live cashes, not much was known about Germany’s Nicco Maag before his deep run in the 2012 World Series of Poker Main Event. Going into Day 6, Maag was in 10th place with 97 players remaining and had 3,895,000 in chips. He finished in 27th place for $294,000.

Early on Day 5, Maag lost over 200,000 in chips with 10-10 when American Daniel dazedace DiZenzo was all-in pre-flop with Q-Q. When a queen hit the board, Maag shipped the chips over to Dizenzo.

However, later in the day, DiZenzo and Maag found themselves battling it out again when Maag opened with a raise of 35,000. DiZenzo 3bet to 90,000 and Maag 4bet to 150,000. DiZenzo then quickly 5bet to 290,000 and Maag put DiZenzo all-in with a 6bet. Unfortunately for DiZenzo, his K-K was dominated by Maag’s A-A and the cooler ended DiZenzo’s WSOP run, while it padded Maag’s chip count to 2,700,000.

After the cooler, DiZenzo took to Twitter to say, “My bust out hand was the first time in 5 days I got all my chips all in pre bad.”

Right after dinner break on Day 5, Maag felted another American poker player, Steve SteveyBallGame Merrifield, on yet another a cooler. Merrifield got his remaining 870,000 chips in the pot with Q-Q only to be dismayed to see Maag’s K-K. With Merrifield not improving on a 3-5-5-8-3 board, Maag found himself with 3,680,000 chips, which was close to what he ended the day with.

Maag was striving for Germany to have back-to-back champions in the WSOP Main Event after Pius Heinz, affectionately known as MastaP89 on PocketFives, won the Main Event in 2011 for $8.7 million. It would have marked the first time that a country other than the United States would have back-to-back champions in poker’s most prestigious tournament.