Images courtesy of the RunGood Poker Series (Jess Beck)
Some poker players seem born to play the game in the discipline with which they meet success. Benny Glaser was born to compete in mixed games. Jason Koon looks most at ease in nosebleed Triton events, and Phil Hellmuth probably could have been fitted for a gold WSOP bracelet at birth.
Poker is not all about the elite level of the game, however, and for many millions of us, reaching success in lower-level buy-in events is something to strive for.
The middle ground might be the most keenly contested battlefield in poker, and over the last decade Justin Arnwine has carved out a name for himself in poker. The so-called ‘King of the Mid Majors’ has an incredible record at that level, with over 150 live tournament wins in the live arena and over 2,600 titles in online SNGs and MTTs. We caught up with the Hello Kitty wearing grinder to find out what makes him tick.
The Yu-Gi-Oh Legend on Turning to Poker
Justin came to poker through playing competitive Yu-Gi-Oh!, having already experienced the thrill of competing in large tournaments. He once described watching Carlos Mortensen win a WPT event on television after competing in a 550-player Yu-Gi-Oh! tournament and was inspired to take up the greatest card game on Earth.
I actually learned about poker in 2005 when the movie High Roller came out about Stu Ungar, Justin tells us. I was playing cash almost exclusively, but after finally winning a SJC on my ninth try – which is basically the Yu-Gi-Oh version of a WPT – I realized it was impossible to play Yu-Gi-Oh full time as a professional, and poker was a much more viable option. I was 21, so I could go to casinos legally, which wasn’t the case previously.
Taking to the felt, Justin adapted to the differences between the two gaming disciplines and appreciated the similarities between them too. Since then, he’s won over 150 live tournaments, and an almost unfathomable volume of success.
When it comes to winning tournaments, I definitely use a different strategy than what I use to get to a final table. Playing so many SNGs gave me enough experience to highlight what I was doing that worked and what I was doing that wasn’t working.
Having said that, if it’s a live tournament with hundreds of entries and multiple days, the most important factor almost always comes down to who has better mental stamina.
Picture The Scene
Since he was young, Justin has enjoyed a phenomenal photographic memory. He says that helps immensely when he’s at a table full of players in a big live event, especially ones featuring a few “weekend warriors”.
Most people, especially semi-pros, take an approach of ‘I can’t wait to catch a punt’ in those scenarios, but that strategy is basically letting the deck decide who gets their chips. Sometimes they do have a hand or simply hit a gutshot or draw out some other way and beat you. As soon as I see even a slight amount of evidence that they’re ready to go to war, I march to meet them.
As Justin tells us, his combative nature at the felt means that whether he has a premium holding or not, he will give himself a chance to “stack da fish” before anyone else at his table, assuming the role of table captain. This then has a great added knock-on effect.
I have the other decent regs covered after registration ends. In cash games, my visual recall came in handy by spotting when a player went from patient to tilting based on a change in facial expressions or mannerisms. If I’m at the same tournament table as someone for two hours, that can happen there as well.
To Rebuy or Not to Rebuy?
Justin’s willingness to fire multiple bullets has attracted plenty of discussion in recent weeks, and in some quarters, that has turned to criticism. Not that Justin is too bothered, claiming he is happy with rebuy events and freezeouts alike.
If I get seven hours of sleep, I’m there until registration closes and will rebuy as much as it takes. The way I see it is, ‘If this tournament was running tomorrow, would I enter it?’ If the answer is yes, then why put off until tomorrow what I can do today?
There’s almost always a limited amount of flights per event, so in my opinion it’s very arrogant to think the strategy you’re using today will magically work better tomorrow.
There is a skein of accountability running just under what Justin says. This is self-evident, with a lot of what he says coming from a place of humility, the honesty of hard work, and pride important to a man who has endured hard times. If hard times come, here is a man willing to adapt in any way.
One bizarre solution to runbad came during a cash game session where Justin decided to change his clothes to influence a change in fortunes. Unable to source anything nearby without a Hello Kitty emblem on it, he wore the brand, and his luck turned around at the felt.
Ever since, he’d adopted the garb whenever he could. He only switched from cash games to tournaments for a singular reason back in 2017.
Getting run over while crossing the street definitely led to my transition into tournaments, he reveals. What really sealed the deal was when Victor Blom won a tournament sponsored by Party Poker in 2018. Afterward, the commentators were saying that “he never plays live, but he came out for this event and played three grueling 10-hour days to win €1,000,000.”
I was thinking to myself: ‘Three grueling 10-hour days? I used to literally play that while dozing off in between hands! That’s when I started seriously considering making the switch from cash to tournaments, which became a reality in 2019.
Action Man
Justin has previously spoken about taking pride in keeping 100% of his own action rather than relying on backing arrangements. With millions of dollars in recorded tournament earnings, financial independence is important to him and goes right back to his first major influence in poker – The Kid.
I got into poker because of Stu Ungar, and he sometimes played with half his own action. That basically became my red line, but he only did that when someone put up the entire cash amount for his buy-in – he wasn’t selling action piece by piece.
I did that a few times early on, and it just never sat right with me that someone would pick and choose when they thought I was a good bet and when they didn’t, and would only put up money during the times they thought it was +EV and skip out the other times.
Justin thinks that subconsciously, that quandary messed with his thinking during those events, and he was questioning why some might not have wanted to buy pieces of him during the tournament. The same problem came along in swapping action in tournaments with other players, so eventually, Justin decided to carry on under his own steam entirely.
If someone wasn’t all-in on everything, then they can’t be in on anything, he tells me. It’s definitely made my rise to mid-stakes take a lot longer than it needed to, but I stand by that decision, ‘cause once I finally dove in, I dominated because I had already won hundreds of daily tournaments so I wasn’t intimidated.
Man of War
This same spirit of endeavor and huge amounts of practice at a level before he got comfortable was applied to the $25,000-entry NLHE WSOP High Roller event he played last summer, where he cashed for $52,717 in 23rd place.
I tried three times to satellite in for $2,850 and got in on the third entry. Once I sat down, it didn’t matter that I was playing against all these famous people from TV. It was a 6-max tournament, and in 2022 I was the #1 six-max turbo player worldwide for buy-ins between $101 and $300. I felt good in that format against anybody.
As Justin tells us, once he has converted his cash buy-in into chips, he detaches himself from the money easily and snaps into professional mode.
Once I’m registered for a tournament, the cash amount no longer exists in my mind. I view it like I’m in a war and the only satisfying result is total victory, or at bare minimum a podium finish. To me, everything else is a loss, no matter how much money I win from fourth place and below.
Justin believes he has been overlooked by many people in poker, who for whatever reason dismiss his achievements because so many of his victories came in smaller daily tournaments. In 2026, he has taken on bigger fields and established himself on the wider mid-stakes circuit and is chasing the title of GPI Mid-Major Player of the Year.
Winning the GPI Mid-Major Player of the Year is the ultimate goal for me as a non-sponsored professional who doesn’t sell pieces of himself to outside investors who cherry-pick which tournaments they will or won’t put money into. If I win it and decide to go for overall GPI #1 player, I would basically have to travel the WPT circuit like Bin Weng did.
Justin identifies this as the barrier to success in this endeavor, but won’t rule out a tilt at the biggest title of all.
To compete seriously for overall GPI POY, I would have to be sponsored by one of the online sites. If I were going to play in $100k+ buy-ins without winning a satellite, I would have to sell action. If I were offered a sponsorship, I would renew my passport and travel to Asia for Triton and to make a run at GPI POY, probably play some of the PokerGO Studio events as well.
A Burning Ambition
When he considers his tournament ambitions, Justin tells me that goal stands out among all the others in his career, and one brand too.
The 100% mandatory achievement I have left to do is win a live WSOP bracelet event. Preferably a multi-day non-turbo event. I would like to win a WPT main event, but they basically don’t exist on the East Coast, so I get one chance a year in December at Wynn Las Vegas.
It’s fallen off my list of mandatory priorities, and Matt Savage’s recent behavior hasn’t made me like to travel around and chase a trophy of theirs either.
Not that Justin isn’t open to change, he does mention that if the World Poker Tour sponsored him, then he might add in their international events to his personal poker calendar.
As for the EPT [European Poker Tour], when my daughter is older and can travel with me, I’m definitely going to play some of those; they don’t run enough at the moment for me to acquire any legitimate sample size, so I’d basically have to win the first time I make a final table, or it’s not going to happen.
As for cash games, Justin would consider returning for an online World Championship cash game, adding that a 6-max or 8-max version of a cash game would appeal. Justin doesn’t “dabble” in cryptocurrency, so can’t play on sites such as CoinPoker.
I’d love for some kind of contest where all the best cash game players got together and competed in a live format that lasted at least a month so there was a lot of volume.
Other than that, I think the last thing on my poker bucket list would be a seven-figure score for a win, not buying into a $250k and cashing for $1,000,000; that wouldn’t mean anything to me. It would have to be a first-place finish.
Even if online poker disappeared, Justin believes he would still be found in a daily tournament somewhere; he loves the game so much. It’s this obsession with poker that keeps him coming back.
I’ll always love the game, Justin says. Part of the reason I got into poker and was willing to deal with so many ups and downs and then continued to do so is because I could see myself playing poker even if I live to be 90 years old.
With his spirit of endeavor and a resilience hewn over many years and various periods of turmoil, Justin Arnwine has come from the streets to play poker with his heart on his Hello Kitty sleeve.
Unless you’re facing him in a hand of poker, it’s impossible not to root for him.
