Bodog Ari

I'm Ari Engel and am also known as BodogAri online. I've played poker for a living for virtually my entire post-college life. In the last few years I have started teaching people my style and philosophy on poker tournaments. Many of them have done very well. If you are interested in getting my help, email: thebodogari@gmail.com

Monday, March 22, 2010

2nd MiniFtops, Subiime Wins!!! and Media Coverage

I've been a good run recently, almost managed to take down my biggest field tournament ever, but ultimately came 2nd in the $20 Mini-Ftops Turbo with 10,772 entrants. It feels great to finally get a good run going on Full Tilt, since I've had disproportionally more success on PokerStars than FTP so far in my career.

Thank G-d our training business is continuing to grow. On April 16, we're running our first 3 day weekend bootcamp, which should allow more students who work in the real world to partake.

Speaking of students (although he's such a superstar now, its hard to remember when he was merely a "student") huge congratulations to Joe "Subiime" Cheong for taking down a WSOPC ring in Rincon on Sunday. We now have 6 rings in the extended ATC family.

Recently Emunah Magazine published an article about me: Emunah.

Additionally, I participated in a poker documentary, Post Oak Bluff:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Friday, March 05, 2010

Letter to a Student: Perspective

I responded to a question via pm today and figured this might help someone (This is crossposted from a post on TheMavenVT forums a little while ago):

It can definitely be tough sometimes. You just have to remember what you're getting yourself into when you sign up for a tournament. If you're playing a 1000 player tournament, and lets say, you stand to win it double as often as an average player... so you win it 1/500 times. 499 times you're losing and that's if you're absolutely killing that tournament by being double as good as average...
Losing tournaments is part of our winning formula, you should not play to avoid losing, rather play to maximize your profits, and the way to do that is to make the best decisions possible. Often times this will still result in you losing, however every now and then, things will come together and you will hit a nice score.
As a competitive person it can be hard, but you simply are fooling yourself if you expect to win each and every day. It's taken me a long time, and I still have a way to go. Imagine a baseball batter being upset batting 400 (which would be beyond world class) because he's getting out more often than he gets a hit. Anyone who knows baseball knows that would be crazy. The same thing applies to tournament poker.
I like to think of it in a long term way. For example: From an ev perspective, given how well he plays, how often, tilt factor etc. John Smith expects to make 365K in the next year. The way I look at it, John Smith makes 1K a day for the next year (assuming he plays each day). As long John shows up each day and makes decisions to the best of his abilities, he will get paid 1K for working that day, regardless of his actual results. Yes, some days he will lose 3K, and some days he will win 10K, but in my reality he simply makes 1K a day for showing up and performing at the level he should.