Player Focus: BodogAri

BodogAri - aka Ari Engel - is a hugely successful online poker player. However, rumour has it the 23-year-old's dad was none too impressed with his son's choice of career when he found out about it.

After graduating from NYU, BodogAri quit his job answering phones with a start-up computer company because his online poker play was proving so successful. "My father hated it. I asked him if he'd prefer if I was a stock options player."

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Whatever his father's opinion of online poker, BodogAri had certainly found the right career path in terms of income. His aggressive, unpredictable style of play has netted him more than $1 million and made him consistently one of the highest-ranked players on the internet.

BodogAri began playing during his second year of college, showing the type of discipline that goes some way towards explaining why he's so successful at the game. Rather than depositing and losing his own cash, he learned the ropes simply by watching his room-mate play.

BodogAri explained in an interview with psmoney.com: "He used to play online poker all the time. For three months I only watched, never played a hand.

"Over the next six months, I played $5 and $10 tourneys, and made a little. After college graduation, I completely stopped for about two months barring my weekly $40 home games with college friends, where I broke even.

"During one of those games, two of my friends were raving about a new site where they both made over $1,000. I signed up for Bodog [as plain Ari] and turned my $150 deposit into $10,000 within a weekend playing $2-$4 no limit. I gave up my day job within 10 days. The rest is history."

As well as winning big on Bodog, BodogAri has collected just under $500,000 on PokerStars since October 2005 and says he much prefers playing online poker to live.

"I get bored too easily playing only one table, waiting for the shuffling, general slowness, etc."

If you come across him on the tables, you have been warned. And that goes for the low level MTTs too - not just for the $200 buy-in events that take place on Sundays. According to his poker stats Ari still likes to play in the $5 rebuy tourneys on PokerStars.

You can check out his blog here if you want to find out more about him.

View BodogAri's PVi Profile here



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