Over the last few weeks, Aram Oganyan has hit a new peak in his poker career. He cashed for a hair shy of $1 million, a career-best, in Korea, and Oganyan was anxious to find another tournament and more action.
“I went to play poker at Triton [in Jeju, Korea] three, four weeks ago. I had a great time there, and I did really well. I suppose I was feeling hot, and I just wanted to keep it going. And I was like, ‘What’s the next poker thing going on?'”
He landed on coming on board WPT Voyage, with a $25,000 buy-in, a $10,000 buy-in and the $5,000 Championship event among the events on offer on the schedule. He wasn’t able to get into the $25,000 event however, as Oganyan was too busy winning the 2024 WPT Voyage Championship event Wednesday night in international waters.
“I almost didn’t even play this,” said Oganyan. “Had I done better on Monday online, because I had some Monday stuff online, [who knows?]. And then luckily, I busted out, and here I am winning this. But I mainly play the bigger events. I just wanted to run it up, fire more bullets and get in there.”
Oganyan had been close to winning in a big live spot before. On two separate occasions in his career, Oganyan got heads up for a World Series of Poker bracelet only to fall one spot short.
“I feel amazing,” Oganyan told Vince Van Patten. “This is so fun. This is like unbelievable, won some flips at the end. Got some bluffs through and here we are we got our name on the trophy.”
Oganyan put a small asterisk on it, because the title came after the final three players elected to chop the prize pool and play for a small amount of money along with the $10,400 seat to the WPT World Championship in December. But his vibe was generally quite positive and celebratory as the post-tournament festivities got underway.
“I feel like it’s nice to win it, but I still don’t 100% feel like I actually won it, because of the flipping,” said Oganyan. “I feel like it would have been nice to play it out, and it would have felt more of like a real deal championship. But they wanted to chop it, and I always take someone asking to chop as a compliment, like, ‘Hey, I think you’re good at poker and I don’t think I have a big edge over you.’ So we just agreed to cut the variance down, flip for the championship and here we are.”
After banking $214,245, including over $200,000 in cash, Oganyan was ready to buy drinks and do some gambling on the WPT Voyage. He’s looking forward to playing the one-day $10,000 buy-in tournament on Thursday, no matter how late the party goes following his victory, and he’ll be celebrating at least until the boat pulls back into port Saturday morning in Miami. There will also be an opportunity to spend Friday off the ship as the Virgin Voyages Valiant Lady pulls into Bimini in the Bahamas.
“I wanted to hang out with my very pretty lady friend, brought her out and we wanted to just enjoy the cruise and all the fun stuff,” said Oganyan. “I thought poker on a cruise would be an amazing thing, and it is so amazing. This whole thing is so fun. You get dropped off in other countries. You get to go have some fun, snorkel, all this cool stuff. This is amazing, and everyone should do it.”
Oganyan’s name will now have a permanent spot on the WPT Mike Sexton Champions Cup, and Oganyan shouted out Sexton in his winner’s interview. As he soaked in the moment and processed what he’d just done, the win started feeling a little more real.
“It’s a movie – not even a dream, it’s a movie. But yeah, great ending.”