Ari Engel couldn’t get enough Omaha 8 and his obsession lifted him to a WSOP Championship bracelet. For years, Ari Engel was one of the most consistent players on the poker circuit, final tabling and winning major tournaments all around the country, and the world for that matter. However, before 2019, the former #1-ranked online player on PocketFives simply couldn’t produce the same results at the World Series of Poker . He had never even made a final table after years of playing there until 2019, where he won his first WSOP final table in a $2,500 Event, earning over $427,000.
Well, that seems to have triggered something in Engel. Last week, he made it two bracelets in as many series, when he won the $10,000 Omaha Hi/Lo Championship Event . An appreciative Engel pointed out how the bracelet in 2019 was different than this one.
“I had a long drought at World Series where I didn’t get a top nine for various reasons. That was a big mental hurdle because I was thinking is it the desert, the weather, what am I doing wrong because I was winning at other places but not in Vegas?”
Engel went on to explain that this bracelet brought different feelings for him for different reasons. “This one, I really enjoy O8 so winning after spending a ton of COVID time playing O8 was a very nice feeling. Different for sure the first one is more special like that, but winning a $10k Championship is nice.”
Engel has been largely known as a No Limit Hold’em player, but he shared with us that in recent years, he has been playing more Omaha Hi/Lo. He starting grinding PLO8 in 2008, and made Supernova in 2009 grinding six to eight tables at a table. Interestingly enough, Engel barely got into the No Limit bracelet event that he eventually won in 2019, and said that since he was playing so much O-8, he couldn’t handle simply playing one game of live hold’em.
“I was playing PLO8 all day in 2019 and just max late regging events. I showed up at 7 […]
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