He Bluffed and Joshed His Way to $2.5 Million

When I first started speaking with World Series of Poker third-place finisher Josh Arieh to tell the 29-year-old Atlantan that he and fourth-place finisher Dan Harrington were both going to be Card Player cover boys, but that I wasn't yet sure whose story would run first, I received a reply that spoke volumes about the difference between the 24-year-old self-admitted "punk" who won a bracelet in the 1999 WSOP $3,000 limit hold'em event and the 2004 version.

"Dan is this year's story," Arieh (pronounced R-E-A quickly) said. "Without taking anything away from Greg Raymer, getting right back to the final table in the two biggest fields ever, and being a former world champ, too, come on, I'm not even close, even if I did finish third this year."

Harrington's story is amazing, and he'll get his day, but Arieh earned his cover with a dazzling display of poker and a willingness to open up in ways that will, I suspect, leave some of his fellow pros grumbling.

You'll also see not just how much Arieh has matured, but also why World Champion Raymer said that when the final table began, it was Arieh, and not the veteran star Harrington, he feared the most.

Indeed, but for a turn of a card here or there, it easily might have been Arieh occupying the throne (a statement that's true for a number of players, but perhaps a little more true in Arieh's case). Arieh and his game have grown up simultaneously.

"I've always had a lot of gamble in me," Arieh said. "I was reckless when I was younger; I'd gamble on anything. That stuff doesn't interest me anymore, but it never was so bad that it put me in a hole. I would just do things that would blow my bankroll and I'd have to work my way back up, concentrating hard on lower-limit games. It's a great background for no-limit if you can get past it; not everyone can. If you do, your swings will be bigger, but if you mix the willingness to gamble with good math skills and good people skills, you're there.

"You really need all three," Arieh continued. "ABC poker, just waiting for good hands and playing straight up, that doesn't work in big no-limit events against tough opponents. You have to explore and probe, and look at every situation in context. The two cards you own are just a small factor in the hand.

"At the same time," Arieh continued, "having that willingness to mix it up won't do you any good unless you also have the math skills, so you can understand things like pot odds and implied odds, and just having the math skills, even if you also have the gamble in you, isn't enough if you don't have the people skills. You need to be able to sit down and assess who is at the table with you, how they play, and maybe just as important, why they play. Why are they there? Are they trying to win? Are they trying to get into the money? Do they just want a story about beating a famous player in a pot? Do they just want to be able to say, 'I lasted until the second day'? If you want to succeed on a consistent basis, you need to be able to figure things like this out about your opponents, have the math skills, and have the gamble, too," Arieh concluded.

"I remember back when you and I met in '99," Arieh said. "I can't tell you how many times I've reread those articles. I didn't want to be a one-hit wonder. I used the articles that you and other people wrote as a reminder that I had a long way to go."

Arieh's analysis of the 2004 event was both humble and incisive. "First off, I have to say I was blessed with great tables practically the whole way, at least until the end when everyone was good," he said. "Except for one time when I had Chris Ferguson at my table, there was never a time when I felt I couldn't get control of the table early, and that's not because I'm the best player in the world; it's because I got very lucky with table draws.

"I wouldn't come right in firing," Arieh said. "I'd play basic values for 15-20 minutes while sizing up the table. I was lucky in another way, too. I have a lot of experience, but I don't face the kind of problems that Erick Lindgren or John Juanda faces, where players are gunning for them the entire time because they're famous. I think most of the time, my opponents had no idea that I'd won a bracelet or that I was a professional player."

Although Arieh drew one of the "lucky" Saturday seats (Dan Harrington's poll of final-table players indicated that only Harrington had started on Sunday and hence had had to play six consecutive days), he didn't take Sunday off. "I played an Internet tournament with about 1,200 entrants and finished eighth," he said. "It was great for my confidence. I hadn't had a particularly good World Series until that point, even though I felt I'd been playing OK, but that tournament really helped me feel like I was on top of my game, that no matter what the situation, I could read it."

Arieh wasn't thumping his chest here. "I owe so much of that, and my general progress in poker, to Erick Lindgren, and the conversations we have about what's good and what's bad," he said. "We trade a lot of information and insights, and it has helped both of us. I really think that's a huge advantage for anyone trying to get near the top, to find someone as great as Erick who will discuss situations with you."

Arieh and Lindgren are close, indeed; Arieh stayed at Lindgren's Las Vegas home for two months, during both the Bellagio tournament and right on through the World Series. "Come stay with me," Lindgren told Arieh. "You'll have a home life, and eat real food."

"It was great, Arieh said. "I felt like I was going to work when I left for the day's play, rather than 'going downstairs' (from a hotel room). I met Erick online about five years ago. We became friends, and he beat the mercy out of me at golf. The friendship picked up speed fast, because we have a lot of the same interests, including both of us always wanting to improve.

"I was lazy back when I first met Erick," Arieh said. "It was kind of like a baseball player who made it to the majors and then quit working on his game because he figured he'd made it to the majors and his talent would be enough. It isn't; just about all baseball players figure out sooner or later that if they don't keep working on improving, they won't stay in the majors." (I wonder if it isn't tied in to the so-called "sophomore jinx" that humbles so many talented rookies.)

"I was really cocky back in '99," Arieh said. "I remember, I told you Johnny Chan was 'just another player.' Erick never sat me down and told me, 'You have to work harder,' or 'You have to lose that cocky attitude,' but his example showed me the way."

The way? "To work hard, take the game seriously, get your sleep, and go to work with a clear mindset," Arieh explained. "You need to constantly review situations, and the right plays for those situations, not your bad beats."

Arieh was positively glowing in his descriptions of Lindgren, who won two events on the 2003 World Poker Tour. "Erick pulled me through. He helped me face adversity. Tilting had always been a problem for me, and once you learn how to overcome it, you're at a whole new level."

Arieh then turned a "conventional wisdom" on its ear. "Tilting is worse in a tournament than in a live game," he said. "In a live game, if you feel yourself going on tilt, you can quit; in a tournament, you can't." (Many people won't quit a live game when tilting, which is why conventional wisdom makes tilt more dangerous there, with no downside limit on your losses; in a tournament, you can lose only your buy-in, but you can also blow your shot at all the money you could have won.)

"When I go on tilt, I can't beat the worst player in the world," Arieh confessed. "Erick would always be there for me to help make sure that didn't happen."

Arieh explained further, "Poker is a series of repetitious situations. Success means making the best of every one, of not giving money away when you lose concentration, of going deep into pot odds, so you're thinking not just about what's in the pot now, but what you're going to get paid if you make your hand, the implied odds."

Right there, I want to stop and practically slap all the people who scream after starting with A-K, flop nothing, and lose several more bets (or their stack, in a no-limit tournament), and make them listen to Arieh's words. Yes, you started with a better hand, A-K vs. 10-9; what do you want, an award? Hold'em is a seven-card game, not a two-card game, and I see so many people turning purple about their so-called "bad beats" when most of the money they lost went in after the flop defined both their and their opponent's hands.

Arieh was really energized by this point in our talk. "Always concentrate. Always try to go at least one level further in your thinking than your opponent does. Think to a deeper plateau than your opponent will, so you know why he's doing what he's doing."

Although we didn't discuss too many specific hands from Arieh's WSOP, he did touch on a few. "Here's an example of one I figured out," the handsome father of two said. "In one hand, I made a king-high flush on the river, when the board came J 6 2 Q Q. My opponent bet, and I folded instantly, even though you'll see me calling with all kinds of weak hands in other situations. I knew I was beat there; I knew that because my flush card had paired the board, I was nowhere, and I was right. I can't wait until that hand shows up on TV, so I can find out if my reads were as good as I thought.

"My strategy throughout was to play small pots," Arieh continued. "I'd play those small pots and win – chip up, chip up, chip up – and then sooner or later I'd play a big coin-flip hand. If I lost the coin flip, the little pots had given me enough chips so that I was back where I started, and if I won the coin flip, I was off to the races with a big stack.

"I felt like Gus (Hansen, the terrific Danish player) was inside me," Arieh added. "I know how he plays, and it can be devastatingly effective."

I wanted to know if there was a particular point – other than the obvious, his bust-out hand – when Arieh felt the tournament get away from him. He remembered the candidate clearly. "Without taking anything away from David Williams, who played great," Arieh began, "my big trouble hand was when the blinds were $30,000-$60,000, he made it $120,000 with what turned out to be two fives, and I made it $620,000 with my A-K. It's hard to call half a million with a small pair like that, but he did, and when both an ace and a 5 hit the flop, he doubled through me.

"Never mind my winning that hand," Arieh explained. "Forget about my winning that extra $500,000, or even just his $120,000 if he throws it away. If I just don't lose that hand, I'm OK with about six million. But losing it, now I have only four and a half, David has the same amount instead of one-third as much as me, and Fossilman has eight million. So instead of a small lead on me, he has almost twice what I do and can play much more fearlessly. If there was one big moment, that was it, but it wasn't like I never got lucky in this tournament. At one stretch a couple of days earlier, I'd been all in with a short stack ($20,000) and held A-Q against an A-K with the flop already K-Q-2, and somebody said, just before the turn, 'I had a queen.' Bang, a queen on the turn, the old one-outer. If I don't get lucky there, there's no story to talk about later."

Win the A-Q hand he did, though, and a story did develop. "The first few nights, I didn't sleep well," he said. "I stayed almost as focused as I was at the table, because I didn't want to lose focus. Finally, my wife, Angela, came in, and I was able to get seven or eight hours of sleep … but I'd wake up with my mind racing, thinking about situations.

"The relative lack of sleep wasn't too bad," Arieh explained, "because I have a lot of practice playing eight hours a day, four or five games at a time, mostly Internet tournaments of all kinds. That's a learning tool that the new generation of poker players has that lets them get experience much faster than players used to be able to.

"Besides," Arieh said, "I was just watching the NBA playoffs the other day, and some reporter asked Kevin Garnett about fatigue. I loved Garnett's answer: 'I'm a pro. You don't get tired in the Western Conference finals.' The guys who step up when adversity or fatigue sets in are the players who make names for themselves.

"I was in great shape after day one, but after day two, I had almost exactly the same amount of chips, and, of course, par had changed a lot," Arieh said. "I wasn't worried, though, because the structure is so good that I knew I had time. I was on a real roller coaster ride. First, I felt great from my day one, and then I called home and found out Angela was in the hospital, and I was ready to go home. She assured me she was OK; I was still skeptical about staying and playing, but she convinced me, and obviously she was OK, because she came to join me a couple of days later.

"Before day three, Erick and I talked about Abe Mosseri for two hours, because he had chips and was going to be at my table," Arieh explained. "We knew Abe was a backgammon player and idolized Gus Hansen's play, because Gus was also a backgammon player, so we knew Abe would play situations like Gus.

"One hand, I raised from up front with J-9, wanting to isolate the blinds, because we had decided they were players I could outplay," Arieh continued. "Abe reraised from the button. The flop came A-5-4, and I led out for $40,000. Abe just called. A queen came on the turn, and I fired $140,000; I was trying to get him to fold a weak ace, and he folded his hand. Then, I showed the bluff, and for one moment, regrettably, the old Josh came out a bit. I said, 'Come on, Abe, we're not playing tiddlywinks.' Most people are going to freeze after getting called on the flop, so when I fired again, I wasn't surprised he let it go. Even though I regret the trash talk, I don't think he was able to play the same after that.

"Finally, I got down to $1.5 million," Arieh recalled. "Raymer made it $250,000, and Williams flat-called. I saw two nines and pushed all in, and Raymer had enough chips to call me with A-Q. That hand had saved me before when I had it, but now it was Greg's turn; the flop came Q-Q-J, and I was dead to a 9 and didn't get one. I felt like I let everyone down. I hadn't come to edge up in the money; I wanted to be the world champion. I felt like I owed it to anyone who had ever done anything for me."

Lindgren wasn't Arieh's only coach during the Series. "Carlos Mortensen helped me a lot, too," Arieh said. "Carlos and I had just started to become friends, but we talked about every different way to get money in. We knew when we were down to three left at the final table that if I could double up one time, these guys would be in for a long battle, but it didn't happen.

"There are a lot of people who have done a lot for me," Arieh continued. "My wife has worked a full-time job as a paralegal, and she had our two kids, Sierra and Emily, for the whole two months I was gone playing. My dad raised three kids by himself. Erick has helped so much. I owe a lot of people – not money, but gratitude."

As for the money, even though Arieh said he wasn't there for ladder climbs, that wasn't because he was wealthy (although with this big score, his wife has now quit her job). "I'm not going to burn this money off," he said. "We have a small mortgage, two paid-for cars, and we're not going to change our lifestyle, so this won't be like a lottery win."

Arieh doesn't play the full tournament circuit. He comes out for the last week of major events, but spends most of his time playing a $50-$100 Atlanta game with overs (the game becomes $100-$200 as soon as the players who prefer smaller stakes drop out of a hand), a game I have visited in the past because of my own Atlanta roots. I'd left the area before Josh became a player, though, and we faced off only one time. I remember him raising from early position, and recalling the speed at which he'd played not so long before during that 1999 WSOP event, I three-bet him.

"Do you know who I am?" Josh asked.

"Of course I know who you are," I said. "That's why I three-bet you." Josh folded. I guess I should keep my mouth shut, because I had a hand. Josh didn't recall the particular hand when I brought up that one game, but when I told the story, he laughed and said, "That sounds like the old me, all right. I just can't believe I folded!"

The "old" Josh Arieh had one gear and talked a lot of trash. The "new" Josh Arieh has every gear and play in the book, and reverts to his trash-talking ways only on rare occasion. The next time I play a private game with him, if he raises and furrows his brow when I three-bet him and asks, "Do you know who I am?" I'll probably say, "Yes, I do, and for the life of me, I don't know why I just three-bet you; I'm glad this is just limit poker, where I have a chance."

I'll leave you with one final Josh Arieh tale. We spoke about whether he thought he might be able to parlay his big WSOP win into other money, whether it might come through books or endorsements or some of the other opportunities now available to poker players. "I'd like to think so," he said, "but I'm pretty much at the mercy of ESPN. If they show me a lot, and if they show me in a good light, that sort of thing is possible."

I've got news for you, Josh. I watched you play, and I've listened to you grow up. While I'm sure favorable ESPN exposure will help, you're never again going to be at anyone's mercy!