Poker Articles

Josh Arieh Gallery

Josh Arieh
By Joel Groover

Josh Arieh was mostly upbeat when I interviewed him for a profile about a month before the 2004 World Series of Poker (WSOP). But Arieh, an Atlanta-based tournament pro since 1999, did sound a bit wistful as he mulled his wins and losses at the poker table. "There's so much new money in poker right now that I've been very unlucky not to do better than I have," he said.

After all, Arieh had been fighting through a difficult dry spell for about three years. In the beginning of his career, at the age of 24, he'd won the $3,000 buy-in Limit Hold 'Em event at the 1999 World Series. The following year, he went heads up against Johnny Chan to place second in the $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha tournament. But the former legal courier-though making a solid living at poker-was still looking for that blockbuster, life-changing, million-dollar win.

Fast-forward to a few days after the completion of the weeklong, $10,000 buy-in Texas No-Limit Hold 'Em World Championship. Arieh is late for our post-WSOP interview and a bit harried, having spent all day at an Atlanta BMW dealership, where he bought his wife a brand-new X5. (And met Hank Aaron, who owns the place, in the bargain.) Having placed third in the biggest event in poker history-and won $2.5 million in cash-Arieh can no longer grouse about the whims of Lady Luck.

Then again, maybe he can.

His forceful style, occasionally fueled by headphones blaring blink-182, rattled opponents throughout the weeklong tourney, which I followed religiously on PokerPages.com, rooting for Arieh and watching in amazement as his name ascended ever higher in the chip count. "Josh plays a very aggressive, wide-open, pedal-to-the-medal kind of poker," notes veteran poker journalist Andy Glazer, who has played against Arieh at high-stakes private games in Atlanta. "He likes to put a lot of pressure on his opponents and really put them to the decision."

Considering the astronomical payouts and unprecedented publicity at this year's WSOP, a player with less intestinal fortitude might have tightened up, turned timid. But when Arieh (pronounced "aria") took his seat at the final table, he wasn't about to change his style. He says he felt perfectly comfortable under the lights, happy about the long-overdue attention and eager to go to war. ("I played more hands than anyone at the final table," he notes.)

And yet, toward the end of his eight-hour performance, a certain buoyant, inexplicable feeling he'd had all week-the feeling that somehow everything was right, maybe even destined to go his way-began to dissipate, Arieh says. "It was so weird how, when I needed to call timeout, when I needed to regroup, something always came up, like dinner break would come up right when I really needed to take an hour-and-a-half break. Or it would be the end of the day right when I felt I needed to take a break for the night and come back fresh. It was like God was giving me a timeout whenever I wanted it."

In other words, he was in the zone.

But at the final table, as Greg "Fossilman" Raymer's already huge chip stack took on ever-more-mountainous proportions, Arieh's hole cards became…well, at some point rags are rags. "I started going bad, and I would look at the clock and-instead of five minutes being left like earlier in the week-there would be two hours," Arieh says. "It's like I wasn't being granted that timeout anymore, and that's when you know the end is near."

Arieh's final hand, at about 8:20 p.m., wasn't so bad-a pair of nines. But Raymer, the eventual champion, held A-Q and called Arieh's all-in bet. The flop came Q-J-Q, and he was out in third.

Arieh insists he wasn't elated-at least initially-about the $2.5 million win, just as he hadn't sat back and tried to inch up in money after making the final table, which guaranteed at least $470,000. "I played to win the whole time. It broke my heart, not winning," he says. "I walked outside and I couldn't do my interview afterward because I was so choked up."

"World Poker Tour" star Erick Lindgren, whose winnings so far this year top $1.5 million, was in Arieh's cheering section, along with Arieh's family and 2001 WSOP champion Carlos Mortensen and his wife, Cecilia. Lindgren says he fully expected Arieh to win the gold bracelet. "I think if his cards had been even half as good as the cards the other players at the final table had gotten, he would have won," Lindgren says. "People are going to see-he'll be the star of the show, no doubt [when ESPN coverage of the final event begins airing August 17]."

Lindgren credits Raymer with playing back at Arieh. But of the final three combatants, he says, Arieh "is the only one who faced any adversity, really. He was the one who lost a lot of the big pots in race situations. He would keep building his stack and then he would lose one, but he didn't let it get to him. He would just go back to building his stack."

Lindgren is something of a secret weapon for Arieh. The two are close friends (and occasional adversaries on the golf course), and Arieh stayed at Lindgren's place in Las Vegas through much of the tournament. Lindgren, in fact, may have had something to do with Arieh's comfort in front of the cameras. "Early on in day three, Erick, who already knew all of the camera people, told one of them, 'Look, if you want to get some day-three coverage of your winner, you need to follow Josh,' " Arieh says. "And so the cameras started following me from day three."

Lindgren and Arieh spent several nights after play ended talking strategy and analyzing hands. Like a coach at halftime, Lindgren did everything he could to boost Arieh's confidence. "If there's one person who helped elevate my game to where it is now, it's Erick," Arieh says. "I've had a hard time getting over the hump, but Erick, with his insights, has really helped me work hard at the game and think about the aspect of poker other than when you're playing at the table."

Competition has always been important to Arieh, who moved with his family from Rochester, N.Y., to Atlanta in 1984. He was a varsity second baseman at North Druid Hills High School when he discovered he could wield a cue stick as skillfully as a baseball bat. "I won my first money playing pool and was immediately attracted to the gambling lifestyle," Arieh says. "After the poolroom would close, no one wanted to go home, so occasionally a bunch of us would rent a hotel room and play poker until the sun came up. My dad hated this, but I kept finding it much easier to win people's money doing this, rather than negotiating over a pool game for hours."

Before his 21st birthday, Arieh used his older brother's ID to enter poker tournaments in Biloxi, Miss. He eventually began playing and dealing at organized private games of Limit Hold 'Em, with stakes ranging from $10/$20 to as high as $20/$40. Atlanta native Mark Wilds, now a Biloxi-based poker pro, recalls being amused by Arieh's constant banter at the table-and impressed with his potential. The young Arieh, for example, excelled at playing heads-up, and used shorthanded play as a way to practice reading opponents. "Josh has a lot of card sense, a lot of instinct as far as poker goes, and he has always had it," Wilds says. "But now, as the years have gone by, he has added a lot more discipline to it, more emotional control."

Wilds, who urged Arieh to enter the '99 WSOP, also respects Arieh's ability to balance the demands of professional poker with the needs of his family. For Arieh, one of the best things about the $2.5 million purse is that it will allow his wife Angela to leave her job as a paralegal and spend more time with their children, Emily, 2, and Sierra, 11. And she'll be able to do so in a spacious new home.

Lindgren says Arieh's WSOP win is only the beginning. "It's just going to build his confidence," he says. "You can expect to see bigger and better things from him in the future." And Arieh himself sounds like a man with something to prove. "What I want out of the TV coverage is, I want to be looked at as this year's Phil Ivey," he says. "Last year, Phil Ivey was very unlucky not to win. He was by far the best player in the tournament and that's kind of how I want to be looked at this year, because I feel like I played the best. I feel like I moved my chips the best and put on the best show."

(Joel Groover is an Atlanta-based freelance writer.)

More Interviews