David Benefield started Day 7 of the 2013 World Series of Poker Main Event in 27th place out of 27 players remaining. He had 1,840,000 in chips and the experience to make a run to the illustrious November Nine. He ultimately took eighth place for $944,000 and was a fan favorite down the stretch, Benefield is affectionately known in the online poker world as Raptor, and before Black Friday was a dominant online poker pro and an instructor at Cardrunners.

Benefield is also no stranger to the live poker tournament scene, where, prior to his Main Event finish, he had mounted over $600,000 in total cashes, all of them coming at the World Series of Poker. In late 2012, Benefield had his largest haul with an eighth place finish in the 50,000 Euro WSOP Europe High Roller Re-Entry event for over $150,000. His other six-digit score came in 2010, when Benefield finished in sixth place in a $5,000 preliminary WSOP event for $135,718.

A key hand on Day 5 brought Benefield over the 3.0 million-chip count mark. In a big pot, he got it in against Christopher Kinane where Benefield’s K-K held against Kinane’s Q-Q on a 3-3-9-T-5 board.

Benefield started Day 6 with 3,675,000 and, overall, had a rough day, with his chip count totaling half of that at the end of the day. However, unlike over half of the field, he survived another day to try to make a last-ditch run to the final table.

Near the end of Day 6 with the blinds at 100,000/200,000, Benefield opened the action with A-J in early position with a min-raise. From the big blind, Bruno Kawauti 3bet in what might have seemed like a move to Benefield to 550,000 chips. Benefield 4bet all-in, which Kawauti promptly called, making this an over 4,000,000-chip pot.

Benefield could not have been too happy to see himself dominated when Kawauti turned over A-A. The board of 9-8-3-6-T was of no help even though Benefield was alive before the river with a nut flush draw. Fortunately for Benefield, he had Kawauti covered and had a chance on Day 7 to recover.