Josh Arieh Wins Fourth Career World Series of Poker Bracelet In $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo Championship

Two days after final tabling the $50,000 Poker Players Championship, Josh Arieh won his fourth career World Series of Poker bracelet and second of the 2021 WSOP. All while the tournament he previously busted was playing down to a winner right next to him.

On Wednesday evening, Arieh fell one spot short of making the final day of the Poker Players Championship, finishing sixth for $161,422. He was the first casualty of the final table, but only the final five players would play on PokerGO’s live stream.

Following his bustout, Arieh jumped into the $10,000 pot-limit Omaha hi-lo championship. He finished Day 1 with one of the larger stacks in the field and eventually bested the 208-entry field to win the title and $484,791.

“It was really motivating having that right there,” the Atlanta native said about the Poker Players Championship final table being right next to his pot-limit Omaha hi-lo final table. “I think I tweeted ‘I’m not sure if this is going to be tilting or if this is going to be motivating.’ I was able to have it motivate me. I really wanted that one because of the year before when I came in second, but this is hell of a consolation prize.”

The victory is the continuation of an extremely strong series for Arieh. He cashed five times thus far, including three final tables and two victories. Slightly more than two weeks ago, Arieh won his third bracelet in the $1,500 pot-limit Omaha event for $204,766. His five cashes over the last several weeks are worth a total of $856,609, which puts him in contention for the WSOP Player of the Year title.

The second WSOP victory also vaults him up the leaderboard in the Card Player POY race as he earned 900 points Friday night, which puts him in 70th place for the title.

He’s the third player to win multiple bracelets this series, joining Kevin Gerhart and Anthony Zinno. All three players won their third and fourth bracelets this year. Arieh became the 55th player to win at least four WSOP titles and the 57th player to win multiple bracelets in a single WSOP.

He hopes that as the milestone victories continue to pile up, he’ll have a shot at accomplishing something that his family could be proud of.

“I really want my kids to be able to say that their dad is a hall of fame poker player,” Arieh told Card Player after the win. “I knew that I had to do a lot more than I had already done. Hopefully, this run 25 years into my poker career will give me a chance. Bracelets are cool. Nobody asks you how many Deepstack tournaments you won. They count bracelets. And we all do too.”

Arieh is a seasoned pro in most games but considers pot-limit Omaha his main game. While he plays a lot of the four-card variant, the split pot aspect of hi-lo is still somewhat new to him. Despite that, he was able to find some edges over the rest of the table.

“I noticed a lot of the mistakes I made, but I also noticed a lot of the game-play mistakes the other guys made,” said Arieh. “There was a point when they let me see flops when they should’ve never let me see flops. There was a point when they were gambling when they should’ve never been gambling. Just my experience in pot-limit really helped me figure out what I should be doing.”

There were 12 players returning for the third and final day of the event with Arieh in the top half of the chip counts. Four players were eliminated in less than an hour with Arieh scoring half of those knockouts. The eight-handed final table was reached quickly with Arieh heading to it second in chips behind eventual runner-up Danny Chang.

Chang extended his lead by eliminating Matt Woodward in eighth. The two were all in on the flop with top pair, a flush draw, and an emergency low draw for Chang against top and bottom pair, and the nut low draw for Woodward.

The middle card paired on the turn, which counterfeited Woodward. The river didn’t fill his low draw and he went to the cashier to collect his $46,813 prize money.

A few orbits later, Arieh made the nut flush and the nut low against Chang to basically even out the top two stacks and put some serious distance between them and the other six players.

It was just a small bump in the road for Chang, who went on to eliminate Aaron Kupin in seventh and Adam Owen in sixth to move further up the leaderboard.

Anatolii Zyrin, who was also battling for his second bracelet of the series after recently winning the second of his career in the $400 colossus, eliminated longtime pro Jeff Gross in fifth. The last of Gross’ chips went in the middle preflop with J663 against Zyrin’s AA75.

The board ran out Q9734 and Zyrin’s aces were good for the high half and was the only one of the two with a qualifying low to eliminate Gross.

Chang then went back to work, eliminating Dan Colpoys in fourth. Chang flopped a set of eights against a gusthot straight draw and a low draw for Colpoys. The turn and river were both missed Colpoys and with three players left, Chang held just shy of 10,000,000 of the 12,700,000 chips in play.

Despite the massive chip advantage, three-handed play went on for quite some time and Arieh made his surge. Over the course of more than two hours, Arieh and Zyrin both chipped up and then Arieh scored an important double up through the Russian.

They got all the chips in preflop with Arieh’s AA103 up against Zyrin’s A743. The board ran out 1094J5 and Arieh doubled up to move into the chip lead, dethroning Chang for the first time at the final table.

Arieh then eliminated Zyrin in third and took a slight chip lead into heads-up play against Chang.

The two only battled for about 30 minutes before Arieh won the final pot of the tournament. He won the majority of non-showdown pots to extend his lead to a 3-to-1 advantage before Chang got the last of his chips in the middle preflop and was called by Arieh.

Chang showed AK52 and was in the lead against Arieh’s Q654.

The flop of 963, however, gave Arieh the lead. The 2 on the turn gave Arieh the nut straight, but Chang a better low. The A on the river, however, gave Arieh a wheel and a six-high straight to scoop the pot and eliminate Chang in second.

Final Table Results:

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