Griffin Flush_EntityBenger (pictured) bested a phenomenally talented final table in the $1,000 buy-in UB.com $150,000 Guarantee. The tournament drew 154 players on March 30th and featured one of the most stacked final tables we’ve seen in recent memory. The group included the likes of Bryan IknewwwitLeskowitz, Scott SCTrojansFreeman, Mike inissintGlasser, Eric whitE_mAmbALadny, Charlie chaz_man_chazCombes, and Cliff JohnnyBax Josephy.

On the makeup of the final nine, Benger told PocketFives.com, “It’s always tough in a $1K buy-in tournament, especially on UB.com, because there aren’t as many satellite winners. I was fortunate enough to win a pretty big A-K versus 7-7 flip approaching the money. That gave me around 40 blinds and the freedom to be more active and pick up more uncontested pots.”

He added, “I also had a few coolers against Jason JAKoon1985 Koon, who had built a really big stack. Basically, there were three setup hands in a span of 30 to 40 minutes where I got every single one of his chips, with Q-Q versus A-K, button versus small blind, being the final blow. Once that happened, I had over 100 big blinds and was really able to play my game and abuse as much as I could, which actually proved pretty difficult with SCTrojans on my left.”

Heads-up, Benger faced off against Leskowitz (pictured) and ultimately came away with the win and a payday of $40,000. He remarked, “Iknewwwit and I have a history. We’ve battled a lot on Full Tilt and what really snuck me into the heads-up was recognizing when he was weak and 3betting him on the final table. He had so many chips and nobody else was really playing back at him, so while everyone else was floating between 100,000 and 130,000, I was slowly chipping up to 180,000.”

Leskowitz took a sizable chip lead into heads-up play, but Benger drew out on pocket queens with K-Q. Benger divulged his key to victory: “The key was setting up the dynamic early that I was going to be a thorn in his side, so once we got to heads-up, and I had that timely suckout, I had all of the momentum.”

In case you’re wondering, because we were, Flush_Entity is a Counter-Strike reference. “I used to be a professional gamer and played Counter-Strike,” Benger enlightened us. “In the early beta versions of the game, whenever you started to lag, you would get this red error in the top right corner of the screen that said ‘cl_flush_entity packet 0.’ Nobody really knew what it meant, or really cared, but when I started playing poker, I just thought it sounded kind of cool.”

In the end, his love for Counter-Strike waned. Instead, he found poker, which offered a new set of challenges. Benger relived the end of his CS days: “If you’re not willing to put in the time to keep up with the new kids on the block, they’re going to blow by you. CS is a lot like poker in that sense. You need to constantly be improving and adjusting because there’s always someone out there who is working harder than you are.”

In back-to-back weeks in February, Benger final tabled the PokerStars Sunday Million, finishing in eighth place and seventh place.

Despite running deep in the large-field tournament twice in a row, he was somewhat discouraged at not coming out on top: “It was pretty crazy, but very disappointing in the end. I lost with 10-10 versus Ac-2c the first time around and then Ah-Qh versus A-10 offsuit the second time. Late game variance is so key, but it’s no secret that you have to win a ton of showdowns to final table the Million, so it’s hard to complain. I just wish I’d finished in the top three once instead of in the top eight twice.”

He wanted to lend shout outs to Shyam s_dot111Srinivasan “for teaching me everything I know,” tuna_fish_tank, David cairns1987Cairns (pictured), Andrew Drewfus81St. Jean, jadedjason, Michael Tokyo09Le, Mike goleafsgoehLeah, and Grandmaces. Benger described his crew as a “supportive group of friends and poker players and I owe my success to them.”

Play in this week’s running of the UB.com $1K.