Aram Zobian has been on quite a poker journey – from playing RuneScape as a teenager (and getting scammed out of his bankroll), to discovering poker while selling weed, to making the final table of the World Series of Poker main event.
He finished sixth in 2018 for $1.8 million, but soon found himself running through most of that windfall and needing a major turnaround in his career. It took some time, but he ultimately clawed his way back to the high roller circuit.
Zobian has nearly $7.7 million in tournament winnings. Last year he cashed in half of the US Poker Open events, including a win at the PokerGO studio, on his way to earning the series champion title.
On a recent appearance on the Table 1 Podcast, Zobian discussed the ups and downs of his career. Check out the full episode. You can also watch or listen to the entire episode on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or any podcast app.
Justin Young: Did you grow up playing games?
Aram Zobian: I played a lot of games. I was a RuneScape nerd. I played that and a bunch of Nintendo – Mario, Super Smash Brothers, all the good ones.
Justin Young: So you were more into video games, not bridge or chess?
Art Parmann: I only learned this last episode, but on RuneScape you can make money and there’s gambling in it. And the money in the game has real world value, apparently. Is that something that you picked up and got you interested?
Aram Zobian: Sort of. I was at the end of my (RuneScape) career. I was doing high-risk fights, where you’d be risking about $100 in real life value if you sold it. But I got scammed at the end of it for pretty much my whole bankroll in RuneScape. I was like, ‘Ah, it’s kind of a good time to quit.’ I’m glad I did because it was kind of ruining my life.
Justin Young: How old were you when you got depleted?
Aram Zobian: I was 18. I had been playing since I was nine years old.
Justin Young: So poker wasn’t even on the radar at this point?
Aram Zobian: My buddy in middle school showed me (how to play) and I was like, ‘Oh, this is a cool game.’ We watched it on ESPN and that was the best footage, let’s be real – skipping over to this table here and then having this drama over here with the Jack Link’s beef wild card hand. I really loved it.
While watching, I would be like, ‘Why are these guys betting so small? I want to play with these guys one day.’ So, it definitely interested me, but I didn’t play until years later.
I went to community college mostly to appease my parents, and I was going for finance. I didn’t really have a direction. I was not interested in going to school, so at the time I was actually selling weed.
I was working a couple minimum wage jobs, but I was introduced (to poker) by selling weed to one of my clients. I fell in love with it immediately. I was like, ‘Wow, this is the best thing ever.’ I pretty much just dropped everything. I had done three years in community college and hadn’t graduated. So, it wasn’t a great situation school-wise.
Justin Young: What got you into weed selling?
Aram Zobian: As a teen, I was not that popular, so part of it was validation. And making money. I never had money. I never had an allowance. My parents didn’t spoil me. We had a good life, but if I asked for money for the movies, they would give me a hard time about it. I was like, ‘I want my own money,’ and I didn’t necessarily want to work just yet, so I started selling weed instead.
Art Parmann: So, you can be too strict with your kids about money. They’ll go out and sell weed! (laughing)
Justin Young: They’ll teach themselves to be an entrepreneur. Honestly, other than the illegal part of it, I think that’s fantastic, as long as you don’t get caught.
I remember when I had a real job, and I was playing home games in North Carolina, inevitably 10% of the players in the room would be drug dealers. It was a perfect fit because they had loose bills, and they wanted to run through it. They were not trying to launder or anything like that, but they liked to gamble.
Aram Zobian: I pretty much blew through all of it. I had about $20,000 saved and I went to zero. Poker players going broke? I did it a few times, but I did it fast. That’s something I really like about poker – that you could play with doctors and lawyers, but also drug dealers and world travelers and all these characters.
Art Parmann: It’s the great equalizer. If you have the buy-in, that’s all you need. Just show up and meet whoever else has the buy-in and wants to play.
Zobian blew through much more than that later in his career and eventually hit rock bottom, but he says that going broke may have benefitted him in the long run.
Justin Young: So, you’re 23 years old and you hit for $1.8 million (in the WSOP main event). You had 70% of yourself, so we can all do the math. I don’t know how you were when you were 23 with that much money, but I know I would not be a good human for a while. What were you like?
Aram Zobian: My head blew up. I was far too confident in my poker play, to say the least. I moved out here (to Las Vegas) pretty fast. There was somewhat of an urgency because of the tax year – save money and just get here for half of the year. I moved right into The Martin (a luxury high-rise residence) to the 28th floor into a furnished apartment.
I’m not a huge partier, but in Vegas you can just have drinks and food and whatever, whenever you want, weed whenever you want. I was a big stoner at the time, so I was isolating myself – getting into plenty of trouble, just chasing pleasure essentially. I was playing a bunch of video games, and not making much of my life for a while.
As for poker, I started playing $25Ks on my own dime with 40 buy-ins or whatever – just being outmatched in those fields because I was way too confident.I had to learn pretty fast that it was just going to go south if I didn’t make some adjustments.
I’ve always been generous with my money, and that’s one thing I would never change. I snap-donated tens of thousands of dollars, and gave homeless people $100 here and $100 there. I felt like I had infinite money. Obviously, I didn’t. Even when I went broke after that, I went to zero, that was one thing I would never change – all the lives I was able to help.
Justin Young: Good for you. Probably the only productive money you spent of the million was helping people out. Obviously, you were trying to make yourself money at the same time, but when you look back, you can’t get mad at helping people out.
Aram Zobian: Thankfully, I went broke… because I needed to. I think that if I went from having $1 million to $5 million to $15 million… not that I couldn’t have returned to the righteous path, but it was very unlikely that I would have been a good man for a long time.
While Zobian may have lost his bankroll, he eventually returned to playing high stakes.
Justin Young: How long was this grinding process before you were comfortable playing some of the higher-stakes buy-ins?
Aram Zobian: I had some online scores and was mostly playing online for about a year. I didn’t really want to be in the live setting. Then three years ago was my first breakout win at the PokerGO Cup. It was kind of a long time coming. I always felt like I was good enough strategy-wise, but mentally it was such a big difference because I didn’t feel confident in there. I didn’t feel that I was worthy of being around those guys, or if I had the chips I would probably just punt it off forcing it – reasons of inadequacy or whatever.
Art Parmann: Clearly you had put the work in, so you did deserve it. You just hadn’t had the results yet.
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Aram Zobian: In my first run-up, I was carefree, happy in the main event. But the second time around, you go broke and have all this negative emotion to deal with. It’s so much harder. I think ‘gambler’s confidence’ is a good term. If you lose your gambler’s confidence, then you’re at a big disadvantage.
Justin Young: That is very true. I know the tournaments that you’re a regular in now are a lot of the PokerGO Tour series, which is fantastic. There are a lot of killers over there and it’s tough. We’ve battled together over there a handful of times and I certainly feel I kind of embrace the lack of knowledge comparatively to the other people at my table and just increase variance.
I think that’s just a band-aid, and that’s just an excuse to play the way I want, as opposed to actually getting better and wanting to compete. I’m scared that if I try to get better and I still don’t measure up, I’ll lose all confidence. If I just embrace variance and it’s like, ‘Yeah, well they were better than me anyway.’ It’s not a very mature line that I’ve taken, but it is enjoyable.
Aram Zobian: I think what you’re doing is actually good because you’re leaning into your confidence and going strong with your reads and whatnot.
Justin Young: You were down to your last $5,000 and just grinding your ass off building a bankroll up, which has to breed confidence in your play. Now you’re playing $5Ks, $10Ks, $25Ks at your whim.
Aram Zobian: Yeah, being able to just play the games and have access to them, it’s really not a financial thing. It’s more of, am I good enough to play here? Are people buying my action? I know guys with a huge bankroll, but they’re skipping a lot of these events because they don’t feel like they’re studied enough or confident enough. Now to be able to walk into the studio and just feel gratitude and immense confidence in there – it’s night and day from what it was. ♠
About The Table 1 Podcast
Hosted by high-stakes poker pros Art Parmann and Justin Young, the Table 1 Podcast is on a mission to make poker fun again. Tune in to see world-class pros talk poker, gambling, and all manner of life experiences on and off the felt. Visit the website for the podcast, newsletter, or even to get in the game. ♠
*Photos by PokerGO