WSOP Event #37

World Series of Poker Event #37, Omaha High-Low Split World Championship, 19-21 June 2008

Entrants: 235
Buy in: $10,000
Prize pool: $2,209,000

Final results:

1. David Benyamine, $535,687

2. Greg Jamison, $331,350

3. Jason Gray, $209,855

4. Toto Leonidas, $171,197

5. Mike Matusow, $138,062

6. Eugene Katchalov, $110,450

7. Ram Vaswani, $88,360

8. David Chiu, $71,792

9. Hieu “Tony” Ma, $55,225

The $10,000 buy-in Omaha High-Low Split World Championship (Event #37) attracted 235 entries, creating a prize pool totaling $2,209,000. The top 27 finishers collected prize money.

This was the largest Omaha High-Low Split prize pool in poker history. In fact, only one previous event had ever surpassed the million-dollar mark – the $5,000 buy-in championship held at the 2006 WSOP. This Omaha High-Low Split tournament ranks as the only $2 million-plus prize pool on poker history.

The 2008 Omaha High-Low Split World Champion is David Benyamine. He calls two cities “home” – Paris, France and Las Vegas, NV. Benyamine is a 35-year-old professional poker player.

Benyamine plays regularly in some of the highest-stakes cash poker games in the world. In recent years, he has been on the unofficial short list as one of the greatest players in the game not to have won a WSOP victory, until now.

Benyamine was born in Paris, France. He aspired to be a professional tennis player and had the talent to succeed at one point. However, a painful back injury forced him to take up other competitive pursuits.

After retiring from professional tennis, Benyamine focused largely on shooting pool and eventually became one of the best pocket billiards players in France.

Benyamine says that if it were not for poker, he would have loved to have been an archeologist. He says he enjoys discovering new things. However, Benyamine also stated matter-of-factly, “I also think I would have found poker one way or another. I have too much gamble in me.”

When asked about the importance of winning a WSOP gold bracelet, Benyamine was overjoyed. However, the self-confident Frenchman added, “Winning is always important to me. But I never thought I had anything to prove.”

Benyamine won $535,678 for first place. This was also his first WSOP gold bracelet victory.

The second-place finisher was Greg Jamison, from Las Vegas, NV. With all due respect to Benyamine, if there was an award given out for “Player of the Year” in Omaha High-Low Split, it might actually go to Jamison. He also made it to the final table earlier at this year’s WSOP – finishing 6th place in the $1,500 buy-in Omaha High-Low Split event. Jamison made yet another Omaha High-Low Split final table last year, finishing 5th in last year’s world championship. That amounts to three final tables in the last four WSOP Omaha tournaments.

Two years ago, Jamison won the Omaha High-Low Split championship at the Tunica Grand series, part of the WSOP Circuit. Suffice it to say, Greg Jamison knows how to play Omaha High-Low Split.

Six of the final ten players were former WSOP gold bracelet winners. Oddly enough, the top three spots all went to players who had previously not won at the World Series.

Three-time WSOP gold bracelet winner Mike Matusow made his second final table appearance at this year’s World Series. He won the No-Limit Deuce-to-Seven Draw championship (Event #18) and took fifth place in this tournament.

Former WSOP gold bracelet winner Ram Vaswani finished in seventh place. Vaswani is a member of the popular poker team called “The Hendon Mob,” from London.

Poker legend Doyle Brunson nearly made it into the money. However, he busted out late on Day Two when play was down to four tables.

France becomes the eighth nation to produce a gold bracelet winner at this year’s WSOP. This list now includes Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Russia, and the United States.

All WSOP images are supplied by “IMPDI for the 2008 WSOP”