As a poster boy for a new generation of players, Josh Arieh lives up to many of the associated attributes. Josh Arieh is young and aggressive but his fearless attitude is still founded on talent tuned through years of experience.

The first big hit in the public poker world came in the biggest of poker festivals, the WSOP. Josh Arieh won the 1999 WSOP Limit Hold'em event collecting $202,800. This victory is best described with the words of the World Series of Poker Media Director Nolan Dalla, who said: "In 1999, Arieh - then a 23-year-old newly crowned World Series of Poker winner - burst upon the poker scene with all the subtlety of a John Belushi at a keg party. He was as flamboyant as he was talented, as combative as he was single-minded." Josh Arieh proved it was not a fluke by following it up the next year with a second place finish in the Omaha Pot Limit event. Runner-up became more reputable as he was only beaten by Johnny Chan.

Nolan Dalla might be spot on with his quote on Josh Aries single mindedness concerning the dedication to poker, the tournament and the moment. In other respects, single minded is not a characteristic of Josh Arieh. He is in fact very good in many poker variants. As a successful high stakes player, you have to be advanced in more variants than just Hold’em and Omaha where his first big cashes in the WSOP came. Josh Arieh is able to apply intuition and relentless aggression in all poker games.

As an Atlanta kid born in New York, Josh Arieh learned to play poker in a pool hall. He and a group of friends would hang around after closing to get in some hours of poker after a day of pool. Arieh soon found out he made more money playing poker than hustling pool. This setting is what ESPN.com's Steve Rosenbloom referred to when he remarked on Josh Arieh game with: “He came with a different set of rules”. Arieh continued to tune his skills with tournament poker in Biloxi Mississippi. To get in he had to borrow his brother's ID. Later on he also started to work as a dealer – getting to study a whole lot of flops and tells – and play in the Atlanta area. Today he has played in more than 150 big buy-in tournaments with a $10,000 buy in or more. That is why he is able to combine a ‘pedal to the metal’ strategy with subtle gear changes.

Josh Arieh became a familiar face when he outlasted a field of 2,573 entrants to take 3rd place and win $2.5 million in the biggest poker tournament of its time, the 2004 WSOP Main Event. The following year came with his second bracelet after winning the $2,000 Pot Limit Omaha event. Still as he says himself “I get recognized a lot while I am playing and I hear "there's Josh Arieh," but I don't get noticed much outside of the casino.” None the less his accomplishments have given the sports fanatic Josh Arieh field-level access to the Atlanta Falcons' 2005 home-opener on Monday Night Football, tee times to the links of Waialai Country Club and a lot of time for his wife and two daughters.