Covering poker tournaments for a living has enabled me to meet a lot of people in the poker world. Especially working reporting shifts on smaller tours like the World Series of Poker Circuit, you see a lot of familiar faces who faithfully travel from stop to stop, grinding out a living with cash after cash without even necessarily hitting many huge scores.
One such player is, or was, Alan "Ari" Engel, formerly a very successful and well-known online grinder under the name "BodogAri" who had chosen to turn his attention to the live arena after Black Friday crippled the online poker sphere.