The 2016 WSOP November Nine: Seat 1, Griffin Benger

Each week leading into the World Series of Poker final table we’ll profile one player who will be vying for the championship. Our profiles are sponsored by Advanced Poker Training, one of the world’s top poker training sites. At AdvancedPokerTraining.com you can play up to 500 hands per hour of full-ring, six-max, sit-n-go, or full MTTs against thousands of intelligent computerized opponents, with instant advice, weekly training plans, and much more. It’s the fastest way to ignite your game!

Griffin Benger has already risen to the top of the mountain as a champion in one game, and now he’s looking to make it two.

“I was a part of one of the best, if not the best, Counter-Strike team for many, many years in the early 2000s,” he said in an interview with Sarah Herring the day after securing his place in the November Nine at the 2016 World Series of Poker Main Event. “It doesn’t feel like it was a decade ago, but it also feels like it was a lifetime ago.”

Counter-Strike is an first-person shooter video game played by millions the world over, and Benger’s mastery of it allowed him to play professionally. As he was busy reaching the pinnacle of that game, a number of friends were clamoring for Benger try out poker.

Benger, who said a lot of things come naturally to him, proved to be a quick study. His transition from busting virtual caps to raking virtual chips was successful, to say the least. Online, he dominated for years under the moniker “Flush_Entity” on both PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. He has racked up more than $6.4 million in online cashes to date, and perhaps even more impressively, ascended to the No. 1 ranking on PocketFives, which he held as recently as 2014.

He began traveling the live circuit more in 2013, experiencing success there as well. The Canadian won a €10,300 High Roller at European Poker Tour Berlin for €429,000 in April of that year. He won the inaugural season of PokerStars’ Shark Cage for $1 million in 2014 and also ran deep in that year’s WSOP Main Event with a 90th-place score for $72,369.

Along with the $1 million he has already secured for this year’s November Nine run, it adds up to a hair under $3.4 million in live scores, meaning Benger has won nearly $10 million playing a game that may not even be his best.

But the life of a poker pro can often come at a cost, and Benger admitted in an interview with Remko Rinkema that he got burned out, calling the past few years “rough” and saying poker could be “really draining.” Indeed, after banner years in 2013 and 2014, Benger cashed for merely $40,000 in 2015, with zero results after the WSOP.

…

continue reading in source www.pokernews.com