In the World Poker Tour’s (WPT) stop at the Festa al Lago, Randal RandALLinFlowers came away with the win over fellow community member Michael benvo123 Benvenuti (pictured). Flowers became the youngest two-time WPT champ in history, while Benvenuti took home a half-million dollar consolation prize. The cash was Benvenuti’s second six-figure live score following a runner-up showing in the 2009 Caesars Palace Classic Championship Event in Las Vegas for $129,000. PocketFives.com caught up with Benvenuti to break down his signature live cash.

Benvenuti was upbeat about turning in a second place effort despite missing out on the WPT bracelet and an $831,000 top prize. He told PocketFives.com, “I obviously would have loved to win, but I can’t complain at all about finishing second, especially considering that I was down to two big blinds after losing with pocket kings against the K-10 of Flowers on Day 5. It felt really good just to make the final table after that, let alone finish second.” Flowers ousted four of his five opponents in the six-man finale.

During his run from holding just two big blinds to making the final table, Benvenuti chopped a pot with A-10 against Allen Kessler‘s A-K and then hit a straight against Jason JAKoon1985 Koon (pictured) with A-2 against A-Q. He proceeded to draw out on pocket queens with 8-6 of diamonds after hitting a flush and then delivered another bad beat to Koon by trumping A-6 with J-6. He jovially admitted, “I would like to do the math on how unlikely it was for me to win all of those hands back-to-back.”

Benvenuti was a 3:1 underdog in chips heading into heads-up play against Flowers(pictured). With over $1 million in earnings from tournaments tracked for the Online Poker Rankings under his belt, however, he certainly had plenty of experience to draw from. Benvenuti explained, “I liked my chances given the situation. My stack wasn’t very difficult to play and I didn’t think he would have a huge edge against me. If I doubled up once, I would have been in a good spot to win.” Heads-up play lasted 14 hands.

When we interview various members of the online poker community, the notion of validating a professional poker player’s career periodically comes up. For Benvenuti, the WPT Festa al Lago final table will air as part of Season 9 of the roving tournament series on Fox Sports Net. As such, he can tell his friends and family to tune in: “My family has been asking me if they will see me on television since I started doing this as a profession, so I think it definitely validates it for them. For them to see that I can make this kind of money playing poker is pretty cool.”

Benvenuti was fresh off a trip to London, where he took 28th in the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Europe Main Event for $32,000. Next up for him in the live arena is a trip to Los Angeles, the site of an upcoming PokerStars North American Poker Tour (NAPT) stop. NAPT Los Angeles takes place from November 12th to 17th at the Bicycle Casino.

With PokerStars fiercely marketing the NAPT, many have wondered if the Los Angeles leg of the tour will be the largest yet on U.S. soil, eclipsing the attendance at prior stops at the Venetian and Mohegan Sun. Benvenuti forecasted, “From everything I’ve heard and from past NAPT events, I expect it to get a pretty large and soft field. I would expect somewhere around 800 to 900 players, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they got over 1,000. They are running a bunch of satellites on PokerStars, so that’s always a good thing for a premier live event.”

Online, Benvenuti sits at 215th worldwide in the Rankings after climbing as high as 44th in June 2009. His largest online cash ever totaled $81,000 and came by virtue of final tabling a PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) $1,050 No Limit Hold’em tournament.

Check out our WPT Festa al Lago final table recap.