Seven years ago, and eight months after our community launched, Ari Engel (pictured) joined PocketFives. His results since then have been consistently impressive, as he’s registered about $2.5 million in tracked tournament cashes and ascended all the way to the top spot in the prestigious PocketFives Rankings. Engel was forced out of Las Vegas following Black Friday and now resides in Toronto, Canada, where he continues to enjoy a high level of success.“I was born in Canada and moved out when I was four months old,” Engel told us. “It was a situation where I was able to get a Canadian passport and, for all practical purposes, I was Canadian. It was easy for me to come and go. I wanted to move from Las Vegas to an English speaking, first world country, so Canada was a no-brainer for me. I would never have moved if it weren’t for Black Friday, though.”
In mid-January, the former #1 player drove deep in the Ongame Network’s $100,000 Guaranteed, which takes place on sites like bwin. Engel gave us a scouting report on European poker sites: “People say that some of the other sites are a little softer, but I'm new to it all and I'm not sure yet. It was on a Sunday, so everything kind of blurs together, but things just went my way. Ongame’s schedule looks great and they have a lot of tournaments there. I don’t think they have synchronized breaks yet, which makes it less appealing, but outside of that, it's cool having options.”
Why not stay in the United States? “It didn’t cross my mind seriously,” Engel answered. “Poker is my full-time job, so it didn’t make sense financially to stay in America. I stand to make more playing a full schedule than playing a limited schedule on a few sites.”
You might find it interesting to know that when Engel plays, he’s not 24-tabling like the world’s hardcore grinders. Instead, he’s trimmed the number of windows he has open at any given time to about four: “I tried to play a lot of tables. Maybe in my glory days I played five or six at a time, but I've never been able to properly play more tables. I always end up going back down in number. I definitely wish I could play 30 or 40 tables at a time, but I’m just not able to.”Some U.S. tournament grinders jettisoned the industry post-Black Friday, but for Engel, other than a change in scenery, it’s largely been business as usual. In fact, he’s still going strong in the game after nearly a decade. Engel told us that his training business, AriEngel.com, is also trucking along: “I have a lot of students right now and am trying to market myself for the future poker world. It's really cool that a lot of the people who were around when I was #1 aren’t around anymore. I've seen so many people come and go, so I'm proud to be relevant now. I can still hold my own against these new awesome players.”
He’s also on the verge of reentering the top 100 of the PocketFives Rankings.
It’s been an adjustment period for poker players worldwide ever since last April. Engel was offline for a while, but described how the fields of major tournaments have changed since: “Poker got a lot softer. If you played the $100 Rebuy on April 15th, it was a lot better tournament the next day. As time continued to pass and a lot of the better players have found ways to play, things have reverted to getting tougher and tougher. I anticipate that trend will continue.”
In the last year, Engel has launched a poker backing company, Arial Ventures. He described its purpose: “We have a good opportunity in America, where we have a lot of online players who were beating $30 to $50 average buy-in tournaments online, but don’t have the bankroll to play the live $300 to $500 circuit. I can help them not just financially, but also strategically. One of the skills poker players have is the ability to evaluate other poker players, so I've run pretty well in the backing world.We should mention that if you sign up for bwin through PocketFives, you’ll get two free months of PocketFives Training with the sign-up fee waived, a $100 value. Learn from several of the game’s foremost MTT minds, including Alex Assassinato Fitzgerald, Mike Gags30 Gagliano, and Jon apestyles Van Fleet, only at PocketFives Training. Get started now and sign up for the Ongame Network site.
Canada
United Kingdom
Costa Rica
Australia
Mexico
Denmark
Russian Federation
Sweden
Brazil
Germany
