Ben Lamb (Benba) - 2011 November Nine WSOP Player Profile
Ben Lamb, known in online poker circles as Benba, was the near wire-to-wire chip leader in the final days of the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event. His march to the 2011 WSOP November Nine began with a strong run during the annual tournament series that saw him capture a bracelet in the $10,000 Pot Limit Omaha Championship for $814,000, besting a field of 361 players. Lamb continued his strong surge in PLO by finishing second in a $3,000 event for $259,000.
To top off those two impressive runs, Lamb took eighth in the $50,000 Poker Player’s Championship, an Eight Game event whose final table was played entirely as No Limit Hold’em, and walked away with $201,000. He entered the Main Event second in the WSOP Player of the Year race behind Phil Hellmuth.
Lamb entered the 2011 WSOP November Nine with the fifth largest stack at 20.88 million and ultimately exited in third place for $4 million.
Online, Lamb won a Full Tilt Online Poker Series, or FTOPS, jersey in 2009 in a $240 buy-in tournament that attracted a healthy field of 3,334 players. He walked away with $146,000 for the win and outlasted Full Tilt Poker player Cosmin Cosma heads-up.
WSOP coverage labeled at the time labeled Lamb “the player who is on the hottest streak of any player at this year’s WSOP” and added, “Lamb is playing as well as, if not better than, any player in the world at the moment.” That’s a tough combination to beat.
Lamb entered Day 7 of the 2011 WSOP Main Event in second place behind Ryan Lenaghanand owned a stack of nearly 10 million. He was the first player in the 2011 WSOP Main Event field to pass five million in chips and helped out his cause in part by busting David Labchuk on Day 6 with pocket aces against pocket jacks. The money went in before the flop and the board fell an uneventful 8-5-K-9-3, sending Labchuk away short of the November Nine and pushing Lamb’s arsenal to nearly 4.5 million.
The Tulsa, Oklahoma native has the respect of many of his peers on PocketFives.com and, in 2011, owned over $1.1 million in tracked online poker cashes, including a half-million dollars each on PokerStars and Full Tilt. He joined the online poker community in the latter half of 2008.
