Five Formats, Six Bracelets: Joshua Arieh's Rare Versatility in Numbers

Joshua Arieh has won WSOP bracelets in No-Limit Hold'em, Pot-Limit Omaha, Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo, Limit Hold'em, and Seven Card Stud. That's five distinct poker formats, six gold bracelets, and $11.63M in lifetime tournament earnings from a player who just took the chip lead at the final table of Event #21, the $1,500 PLO Hi-Lo 8 or Better.

The question that number raises is simple: how many players in modern WSOP history can claim bracelet wins across that many formats?

Arieh's six bracelets span five distinct poker formats, a breadth of excellence that might be shared by fewer than 10 living players.

What Counts as a Distinct Format?

Before running the query, the definition matters. For this analysis, a "format" is a meaningfully different game structure requiring a different primary skill set. The buckets:

• No-Limit Hold'em (including short-deck variants played as NLHE)
• Limit Hold'em
• Pot-Limit Omaha (4-card, high only)
• Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo (split-pot)
• Seven Card Stud (high only)
• Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo
• Razz
• 2-7 Lowball (single or triple draw)
• Mixed / H.O.R.S.E. (counted as its own category when the bracelet event itself rotates)
• Other (Badugi, Chinese Poker, Big O, etc.)

A player who wins NLHE three times and Limit once has two formats. A player who wins PLO and PLO Hi-Lo has two, because the split-pot structure demands a fundamentally different hand-selection and equity-realization approach.

Arieh's Bracelet Map

| Bracelet | Format | Distinct? | |----------|--------|-----------| | 1 | No-Limit Hold'em | ✔ | | 2 | Limit Hold'em | ✔ | | 3 | Seven Card Stud | ✔ | | 4 | Pot-Limit Omaha | ✔ | | 5 | Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo | ✔ | | 6 | (Pending: PLO Hi-Lo final table, Event #21) | — |

Five confirmed formats across five bracelets. His sixth came in a repeated format. The pending Event #21 final table is another PLO Hi-Lo, so a win there would add a seventh bracelet but not a sixth format.

Why Multi-Format Winners Are So Rare

The modern WSOP schedule has more than 90 events each summer, but the overwhelming majority of bracelets awarded since 2010 have gone to No-Limit Hold'em specialists. NLHE dominates the schedule, and the player pool for mixed events is dramatically smaller.

Winning across formats requires two things that rarely coexist: deep technical range across game types and enough volume in non-NLHE events to convert that skill into results. Most elite players specialize. They play NLHE because that's where the fields (and the prize pools) are largest.

Arieh's 36 lifetime WSOP final tables across multiple disciplines reflect decades of showing up for Stud, PLO, and split-pot events that many modern pros skip entirely.

The Final Table He's Leading

Arieh entered the Event #21 final table on June 6 with 1,500,000 chips and eight opponents remaining. Among the other notable finishers: Ryan Hoenig (one bracelet, $1.06M lifetime) busted 10th, and Darin Utley (two WSOPC rings, $270K lifetime) fell 9th. Six players remain.

A seventh bracelet here would be Arieh's second in PLO Hi-Lo, reinforcing the split-pot game as perhaps his deepest specialty within an unusually broad portfolio.

Methodology Note

Format categories were defined by primary game mechanic (betting structure + card deal + pot structure). HORSE/mixed events were treated as a separate category rather than fractionally allocated to component games. Bracelet counts and format assignments for Arieh were cross-referenced against WSOP historical results data. The "fewer than 10" estimate for five-format bracelet winners is a directional claim based on available WSOP bracelet history; a precise count requires a full join across all 1,200+ bracelet winners and their event types, which Charlotte can run on request.