David Benyamine Bio

f not for back problems, there is a good chance that the poker world would have never gotten to know David Benyamine. Benyamine started his competitive career playing Tennis. At one point in his life, Benyamine considered a career as a professional tennis player. A back injury forced him to abandon this dream. He was then introduced to poker by a friend that worked at a poker club in France. Benyamine was hooked and the rest is history.

David Benyamine Photo

For many years, Benyamine has been amongst the best high stakes players in the world. He has been regularly seen online playing in some of the biggest games on the planet. He was even a Full Tilt Poker sponsored pro until the end of 2008. Benyamine is also a regular on High Stakes Poker and Poker After Dark.

While Benyamine is known by TV fans of poker as a high stakes No Limit Holdem players, Benyamine is actually considered to be one of the best Pot Limit Omaha players on the planet. When looking at stats of online players, especially in 2008, Benyamine was always near or at the top of the list.

Until recently, Benyamine has not played in a lot of tournaments. He won a WPT tournament in 2003 at the Grand Prix de Paris. From 2003 to 2007, Benyamine has a few decent cashes, but nothing really noteworthy. He was then challenged in 2008 to play in more tournaments and starting with the World Series of Poker, Benyamine began to attack the poker tournament world just the same way he has attacked high stakes cash games.

He finished 7th at the NL 2-7 Lowball event at the 2008 WSOP, just missing the final table by one spot. Five days later, he would finish 3rd in the $5,000 Pot Limit Omaha Event. Three days after that, he finished 10th in the Stud 8 or Better World Championship. Then, just two days later, he went on to win his first WSOP bracelet at the $10,000 Omaha 8 or Better event. He survived a final table that included Toto Leonidas, Mike Matuso, Ram Vaswani, Tony Ma, and David Chiu to take down his first WSOP bracelet.

After the WSOP, Benyamine would go on to have several other strong tournament finishes. He just missed winning his 2nd WPT title when he finished 2nd at the Bellagio Cup in Las Vegas. When asked whether he played tournaments for the title or for the money, Benyamine admitted that the titles mean very little to him. He says that he plays events that he enjoys to play and that can win him a lot of money. That may be a reason why his two best WSOP finishes were Omaha games.

David Benyamine is a strong high stakes poker player that will consistently take your money at the table, especially if you are delusional enough to play him in Omaha. At just 36, Benyamine has already established a career that would be the envy of most poker players. He should be a fixture at the high stakes games, and now high profile tournaments, for many years to come.