Training, Travel and Live Poker

Had an amazing week last week training 6-10 students at a time depending on the day. We were lucky enough to have Kathy Liebert ($5M in lifetime cashes) join us for one of those days and baseball legend Orel Hershiser was there every day, what a great student! This group of students were particularly adept at learning and I think the poker world will see big things out of them in the future. (Sorry not going to give their sn's away:) This week I've working on making a video of my Sunday Million Chop from early 09 for TheMavenVT. Today I'll be doing a private training session with an amateur player who runs a successful business. I'm headed out to NYC on Thursday to visit my sister and brother in law and then will be going down to AC for the Borgata $3500 with Thelandlord. After that I'm going to Tunica for the WSOPC $5k and then heading back to Vegas for another group training session starting on Feb 22. Anyone interested can find more info on ArisTrainingCenter.com or TheMavenVT.com. If you want updates on my progress follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/realAriEngel

Wisdom teeth, HPT tournament and training session

I had all 4 of my wisdom teeth taken out on Monday. My dad flew in to help me out, as I'm historically a horrible patient. However, the surgery and few days after went as well as I could have imagined. I still haven't eaten any real food, but I'm not in any pain, and the pain that I did have after was mild compared to what I had imagined. I played a couple of superturbos throughout the week, but today was the first day I actually put in a MTT session (played 5-6 tournaments) and luckily I was able to go deep in the $75 6max on Full Tilt. I ended up chip chopping heads up with a tiny chiplead.

Next week the Maven and myself are hosting a group training session, where we will have 4-7 students coming each day to watch us play at Aris Training Center. While here they are free to ask any questions, and we will do our best to explain our thought process behind each move. Historically, our students have performed very well, and we have the highest of expectations for this incoming batch. I feel like I have progressed a ton in the last year as a poker teacher/coach and am looking forward to imparting my poker knowledge to new students throughout this year. Before that happens, this Saturday evening (after Shabbat is over) I will be playing in the Heartland Poker Tour event at the Red Rock. I believe a number of past students will be coming in for that, so it should be a fun mini-reunion, and hopefully one of us can take it down.

All the best and good luck at the tables to all of you.

2009 Recap

Congrats to Daisyxoxo aka Jeremy Fitzpatrick on winning the 2009 Bluff Online Player of the Year (OPOY). A couple of years ago, Daisyxoxo decided to invest money in himself and together with a couple of friends hired the Maven to train him in tournament poker. Since that time he's grown into the Maven's top student and has made a huge name for himself in the online poker world.
Having the Bluff OPOY award stay within the ArisTrainingCenter.com family is a tremendous honor and further proof of the benefits of our training.
2009 was a great year for ArisTrainingCenter and TheMavenVT. After winning the 2008 Bluff OPOY, the Maven was featured on the front cover of Bluff Magazine's April edition along with a 4 page article on the Maven and our business. In November, The Maven was the lead commentator of the WSOP Main Event live coverage. Lastly in December, Aris Training Center was featured in a Cardplayer.com "Cribs" like video.
On the table the success our students had was phenomenal. One of our students won player of the FTOPS (Full Tilt Online Poker Series) by final tabling 3 ftops events in the course of 8 days. Another student had a deep run in a WCOOP (PokerStars premier series- World Championship of Online Poker) event for almost $100,000. In a 2 week period, another of our students won 5 PokerStars $100 Freezeouts. And the list goes on... It's been a great year for the Aris Training Center family and I'm looking forward to 2010 being bigger and better. With the upcoming launch of TheMavenVt, The Maven, Daisyxoxo and myself will be able to impart our poker knowledge to a wider audience.
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/realAriEngel