Boorish Behavior in Poker

The behavior of Josh Arieh during the World Series of Poker main event, aired recently on ESPN, has sparked a great deal of controversy in the poker world. For those who haven't been watching, Josh Arieh is a terrific poker player, one of the up and coming pros to watch in the future. But here are a couple of examples of his behavior during just this one tournament:

In a hand with Harry Demetriou when they were down to less than 3 tables, Demetriou had AJ unsuited and Arieh had 9h10h. The flop came AKQ with two hearts. Arieh bet, Demetriou raised him (he had more chips than Arieh), Arieh called and was all-in. They flipped up the cards and Arieh immediately started woofing about what a horrible play Demetriou had made, despite the fact that Demetriou was ahead in the hand and something on the order of a 2-1 favorite to win the hand (Josh had the 9 hearts, assuming no one else had folded one, and the three remaining jacks for a total of 12 outs, but probably less since at least a couple of other hearts had been folded). Arieh got lucky and hit his flush to win the hand, but kept on yapping about what a horrible play Demetriou had made. Arieh acted like a punk, basically, and Demetriou calmly suggested that perhaps he should learn to display some dignity.

On a later hand, at the final table, he and David Williams got into a pot, Williams holding 55 and Arieh holding AK unsuited. Williams raised the blind, Arieh made it something like half a million and Williams called the re-raise, which was about 1/3 of his stack (he had about a million left after that call and Arieh had a much larger stack). Then Williams said, before the flop, "check in the dark", meaning that after the flop, when he was set to act first, he was checking no matter what cards came up. That seemed to upset Arieh a bit, he reacted very strongly. The flop came AX5 (I forget what the third card was, but it didn't matter). Arieh flopped top pair and says "all in" and Williams immediately called and turned up his pocket 5s for three of a kind. A third ace hit on the river to give Arieh a higher three of a kind, but it also gave Williams a full house and he won a $3 million pot to give him a huge boost. Once again, Arieh was woofing about what a horrible call his opponent had made even though his opponent was in fact ahead and favored to win the hand the entire time. Norman Chad, the ESPN commentator who is routinely horrible at his job otherwise (where on earth did they find that guy?), rightly hammered him on the broadcast for his lack of graciousness.

A little while later, Arieh and Williams got into another hand and Williams knocked Arieh out of the main event in third place. Greg Raymer, who had a huge chip lead going into the final heads up match with Williams, got up and shook Arieh's hand and very graciously told him that he was the toughest player he had faced and that he played great. Arieh's response was to shake Williams' hand and say to him, twice, "bust this motherfucker out." And this on top of the fact that in the interviews that sprinkle the show, Arieh had declared that he was clearly the best player at the final table and that no one else stood a chance - and this with former champion Dan Harrington and 3 time finalist Al Krux at that table. In short, Arieh's behavior was arrogant, juvenile and completely undignified, and he has been hammered pretty hard for it.

A couple of other well known poker pros have leapt to Arieh's defense. Erick Lindgren, another terrific young player, posted this message in RGP defending his behavior and explaining why Arieh was behaving so arrogantly - because Lindgren told him to:

I sweated Josh from the minute I was knocked out of the tournament....in fact I became his coach. I decided the only way to make it thru the tournament and all the highs and lows was to make him a warrior. I'm not talking your average aggressive poker player, I'm talking Kellen Winslow locker room speech. For the duration of the tournament he was the best player and to be honest I'm not sure there was a close second, tho the play of john murphy and greg raymer was very good. Josh was in the zone. He was picking up chips by stealing like a madman and picking off bluffs. It was his tournament. I preached to him that this was his shot and he was the best and fuck luck, he was going to win.

Okay, I can understand getting yourself psyched up. I can also understand Josh's confidence, as he really was playing great poker. He made a couple of tremendous laydowns, once with the nut flush against a full house that they both made on the river, and once with trips to a flush. I just don't see what that has to do with his behavior toward other players. One can be confident without behaving arrogantly. Lots of other players in the field were playing very well and feeling very confident about their chances to win, but they didn't act like jerks because of it. So chalk this one up to being understandable, but irrelevant as an excuse. Lindgren continues:

I won't get into the specifics of the call but with Josh raising up front and then betting half his stack on the flop there was no way that Harry had him beat unless Josh held exactly what he did, a straight and flush draw. After five days of blood sweat
and tears his tournament was on the line.

So was Demetriou's tournament, but he didn't berate Arieh for making a call when he was behind in the hand. You could argue that Demetriou's raise was a mistake because, with a board of AKQ, there is a good chance that you're behind in the hand to an opponent holding AK, AQ, KK or QQ (AA is less likely given that you have one of the aces). But that argument works both ways. Arieh holds 9 10 against 3 overcards with a maximum of 12 outs and most likely only 9 or 10. He is at least a 2-1 underdog against anything Demetriou could possibly have raised with other than a stone cold bluff. His only hope was that he beats the odds to make his hand, or his opponent is making a stone cold bluff, but he put his tournament life on the line with this hand and got lucky. Demetriou read the hand correctly, he raised with a substantial advantage against a weaker hand and got outdrawn. And any grounds for criticizing his play here applies at least as well to Arieh, which means his criticism was unjustified as well as undignified.

The one thing we had talked about was eliminating luck as much as possible, this wasnt the situation Josh wanted to play but with the price he had to.

If the one thing you talked about was eliminating luck as much as possible, that makes this call, when he KNEW he had to be behind and would need to get lucky, even worse.

In this instance it is hard to defend Josh's behavior but I will. His tourney was on the line and sure he got lucky. His celebration is no different than Ray Lewis making a great tackle and trash talking or T Mac smoking his defender and letting him know about it on the other end. I felt it wasn't fair to portray Josh as such an ass.

These analogies are pretty poor. Something more analogous would be if someone stole the ball from T-Mac, then missed the layup on the other end - I doubt T-Mac would be woofing about him missing the shot because the bottom line is that the guy outplayed him to steal the ball in the first place. The fact is that Arieh didn't make a great play, he was behind in both of those hands and got lucky in both of them to win. Ultimately it doesn't matter whether the other person knew that or not, their calls were entirely justified. Demetriou was well ahead in their hand, and Williams was short-stacked and knew he was going to have to take a stand. Making that stand with a pocket pair for 1/3 of his stack is not a bad place to do it. Beyond that, the fact is that even if Arieh was completely correct and the other guys played horribly, that still doesn't justify the behavior. The other players all had opponents make bad calls against them and win at one point or another in the tournament. That's part of the game of poker. None of them behaved like a punk in response to it.

Daniel Negreanu, who is both a world class poker player and a class act in my opinion, wrote another partial defense of Arieh. He doesn't really defend his behavior, saying he thinks he acted like a jerk too, and pointing out that Arieh himself also recognizes that he was being a jerk (he did post an apology in RGP, so give him credit for that at least). But Daniel also pointed out that TV producers choose what to show and what not to show and can skew things a lot:

The reason for this post is to illustrate how much power we (the players) give over to the people putting on a show when we sign those release forms. Basically, once we sign those papers they can tell any story they want to tell, and they can tell it any way they feel with get the best ratings...

Back to the point, again I don't condone Josh's behaviour on the show one bit. I just want to warn the viewers that you may not be getting the whole story. If the producers want a villian, they can make anyone a villian just the same way they can make a chump look like a hero.

He is right, of course, that the ESPN producers decided to tell the story of heroes and villains and cast Arieh (and Mike Matusow) as villains. But the fact still remains that they could only do that because those guys acted the way they did. And as someone else replied in that thread, you could take decades of footage of Dan Harrington and no producer in the world could make him into a villain, because he simply isn't one. And the fact is that had the producers edited OUT him calling Raymer a motherfucker, or his reaction to Demetriou and the resulting exchange at the table, that would have been dishonest. You can't really accuse them of dishonest editing for showing that stuff. I agree it doesn't tell the whole story, but it still tells a true story.

The bottom line is that Arieh acted like a classless punk, and got called a classless punk for it. That's hardly unreasonable. I don't know Josh at all, never met him and probably never will. But at least one person whose opinion I trust, and who knows him pretty well, says that he's really a pretty good guy and I don't find that terribly hard to believe either. A few bad incidents in a grueling and pressure-filled 7-day tournament is not enough, by itself, to condemn him permanently to the pantheon of poker evil currently occupied by Phil Hellmuth and his ego. But he needs to learn from this situation and change his behavior to avoid being cast into that pit in the future. He really is a very good player and will no doubt be in the spotlight now that poker is the hottest thing on TV.

The best thing he can do is come back in future televised events and prove his critics wrong by behaving with class and dignity. That will insure that his performance this year will be chalked up to youth and pressure and not to serious character problems. But if he continues to display that behavior, the fans and his fellow players are going to put him in the closet with Hellmuth and assigned to a career of having people roll their eyes at them and wonder if they're ever going to grow up, and he will have no one but himself to blame for that.