Benger told PocketFives.com Podcast listeners that playing in the WCOOP meant a significant increase to his volume: “I was coming off a pretty good August, but I think I put my volume up a bit too much in the beginning of September. I’m definitely going to try to bring down my volume a bit. I’ve been dabbling a little too much on the European sites trying to play my rush.”
His most recent PokerStars WCOOP final table came in a $500 No Limit Hold’em with Rebuys tournament and, accordingly, he admitted that rebuys have been his cash cow: “Any rebuy structures have been my bread and butter since I started getting into MTTs about a year-and-a-half ago. I guess my favorite tournament now would be the $200 Rebuy since I’m playing more of the higher stakes stuff regularly. It’s just a tournament I’ve had a fair bit of success with… It’s a great rebuy structure with a lot of people who are taking shots [as well as] regulars you play with every day.”
Benger transitioned to poker from video games. “I used to be a professional video game player,” Benger told us. “Everyone in the gaming community started transitioning to poker with the poker boom in 2003. After live events in gaming, people would play poker and you’d get interested in it. I remember depositing about $50 and built it up playing the lowest stakes sit and gos. I never really played cash regularly.”
His video game career consisted primarily of Counter Strike, which he admitted served as a suitable precursor to poker: “It’s a very similar community to the poker community in a lot of ways because it’s primarily based on the internet. There were a lot of great people, but there wasn’t a lot of money to be made. It was on its way up and it has kind of dipped back down now.”“The best bankroll builders for me were sit and gos,” Benger responded when asked what the best way to grow a player’s roll is. “But it depends what you have a knack for. [It’s also about] having people around you who are better than you. If there were anything I learned from Counter Strike, [it would be that] if I had an opportunity to play on a better team, I would always take it… That’s really important in poker as well.”
Benger has only been a professional online poker player for a brief period of time. Consequently, his schedule has varied widely. He recalled, “It’s fluctuated a lot in the last six months. This has been a big learning period for me in the last year really. I hadn’t really figured it out and started making a decent profit until 2011, and I had only been doing it about six months before that. I had been playing about five or six days a week from about 2:00pm until 3:00am. I was really going hard at it.”Needless to say, his schedule will cool down following the PokerStars WCOOP: “Since Black Friday, I’ve been taking it pretty easy. I’m only playing two, three, or maybe four days a week. With the WCOOP, I’ve been back to full grind mode.”
Listen to the rest of this week’s PocketFives.com Poker Podcast. You can also salute Benger on his latest big-time final table in a thread in Poker Discussion.
