Tournament Trail POY Q and A -- David BenyamineBenyamine Talks About his Tournament Success in 2008 and his Love of the Game |
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David Benyamine is a true triple threat in the poker world, one of the few. He can take your entire bankroll in Bobby’s Room, at a high-stakes cash game, or at one of the $10,000 no-limit hold’em events he plays in all over the world. Benyamine added a large chunk of tournament success to his poker credibility in 2008 as he took home almost $2 million. He won his first World Series of Poker gold bracelet at the $10,000 Omaha eight-or-better world championship and excused himself from the argument about who is the greatest player to have never won a gold bracelet. Benyamine came very close to winning his second World Poker Tour title as well, when he finished runner-up at the Bellagio Cup IV in July.
Ryan Lucchesi: How did it feel to add a lot of tournament success to your cash-game accolades this year?
David Benyamine: It feels good, I’m really focused when I play in tournaments and I enjoy it much more than I did in the past. I used to not be patient enough and now I am. I’m looking forward to the next World Series. I’m excited to play tournaments when I wasn’t really in the past; I was more excited to play cash games.
RL: Has this taste of tournament success fired you up to go after more titles?
DB: I’m not sure if it is that or something else, just loving to play poker…It’s a big family and I’m part of this big family, and it’s fun. When you love it you know, sometimes you don’t even find necessarily the right reason why you’re playing, you’re just playing because you love it, and that’s a big reason.
RL: You’re definitely playing against a larger sample of players in $10,000 events than you would in the Big Game. Do you find that you vary your game a lot more during the tournaments than you do in high-stakes cash games?
DB: It’s hard to answer that question. I’m not sure…you jump from one table to another table and some tables I don’t know anyone, and obviously I have to restructure everything about strategy about how to handle this table and the position with this player on my right and this one on my left, lots of little things. It goes a lot like that in tournaments but it somehow does in cash games. You know, you’re playing a cash game and then players take off from the pot-limit Omaha table with a big stack and another one comes in and now it’s a different game. It’s all about the same, you just have to be good enough to realize what you need to be doing and then do it.
RL: Is the cash more important to you or the titles?
DB: It has never been about the titles. The title is the last thing I’ve ever been running after. I maybe played a few more tournaments at the end of the World Series because I was third in the ranking. I try to go for tournaments that have nice money and that I also like the game played. I’m not trying to win a title, I’m trying to win so I can have a little bit more money and also because this is just my daily life. I’m trying to do whatever is right in a tournament. If I’m close to cashing in a tournament I want to be cashing. I don’t want to be not cashing, even if its $15-20-25,000 you know, you’ve got to do it step-by-step, and that’s the first step. When you respect the steps then it gives you a better shot to get to the final and even win.
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