Pro-file: David Benyamine

Bluff recently tracked down France’s greatest living poker player to a London hotel room for a quick tête-à-tête. Here’s David Benyamine on his irrepressible thirst for action, beating the Big Game, and being mistaken for a terrorist.

I started playing tennis when I was 13. I loved it and played a lot of hours. My primary goal at that age was to become a professional player. When I was 18, I found out that I had arthritis and needed to stop playing. This was at time when I was in the top 25 juniors in the world and was playing my best tennis. For about three years, I tried to see if I could heal and find a good way to manage the pain, but it was just too hard. After tennis, I began to play French Billiards at a high level in France, making it into the top 10. I was also gambling around, playing all sorts of rummy in Paris, when one day, somebody drove me to a poker room. From that day on, I started playing poker, and have never stopped, nor looked back.

For about three or four years, I was very hurt psychologically. I could not watch tennis or even pass by a tennis match. I stopped exercising completely and gained a lot of weight, and it was a different lifestyle for me. When you realize that your “dream” is over, you feel very down, and it’s hard to re-motivate yourself. I never wanted to go far in school or get a diploma because I was not particularly interested in anything. The only thing I might have considered pursuing was archaeology, but that was going to take between eight and ten years for a postgraduate degree. So I got the idea to make a better life for myself by working with my parents, taking care of their business. At the same time, I was also playing some rummy in Paris and was doing well from the game, but I never made a big bankroll. Soon after, I started to play poker, but I lost a little bit; so I went back to work and got myself into shape. After two months passed, I decided to give poker another shot; I started winning and then continued winning more and more.

In one of the small side clubs – I didn’t even know the Aviation Club de Paris existed at that time. However, I found out very quickly that the ACP was the only real club, with real rules, playing real poker, and if you wanted to be safe you had to play there. Of course, there were many more pros than in the other clubs – the other clubs were more like amateurs gambling around – but there was still a lot of room for players to make a living, to make good money, and to learn.

I didn’t know (laughs). All I knew is that all my life I’ve always been a very quick learner. That’s why when I was much younger I was skiing at a high level, then played soccer, and later on tennis; I seemed to be pretty good at most things I tried. Also, I was good in mathematics, an important skill for poker; and that may be why I had a good sense for all card games.

I just learned by playing. I’d never read a poker book, not even a page. This last year I read a book by Barry Greenstein, a dear friend of mine, but that’s the only book I’ve read. Until recently, I have never even sat down and tried to calculate odds. Most of the time, I know when I should or shouldn’t bet because I’ll have been in the situation before.

I play very often, both on the internet and live. I’m addicted to poker and I love it. I have a lot of gamble in me – I need to play and love to play.

I’ve tried only a little bit of blackjack, but have played a lot of craps. I was a big winner in craps when I started making good money playing the Big Game. Then I lost a lot of money very quickly, and stopped playing. Recently, though, I played with my dad who loves the game, and I lost $270,000. I’ve realized that craps is not made to win, so I don’t feel like playing anymore.

About four years ago. A guy who is one of the best backgammon players in the world heard good things about me from the manager of the APC poker room and decided to give me a freeroll in Vegas. He came up to me and asked if I wanted to go to Las Vegas for the WSOP, and I said, “Yeah, of course!” As part of the deal, he would give me a 20% freeroll, pay for all my tournaments, the flights, and my expenses, as well as cash games. In Vegas, twice I had the chip lead in the Main Event and in another tournament, but I was very unlucky and probably didn’t have enough experience. Otherwise, I wasn’t doing much in the other tournaments. But in the cash games, I was very successful.

Since I thought I was going to be backed in all the games, I had only about $3,500 with me, but for some reason, I ended up only getting backed in the tournaments. So I played with my $3,500 and turned it into $300,000 in a month and a half, playing only cash games. I played as high as I could, and I played games I had never played before, including limit games that I didn’t even know existed. I simply sat down at the table, played with the best players, and that was the best way for me to learn. I thrive when I put myself into situations where I’m competing with the best, but a lot of luck along the way definitely helped.

About three years ago I played $2,000/$4,000, which was the biggest game then. At that time, $1,000/$2,000 and $2,000/$4,000 were very big for me, but I was doing all right. When I came back to the APC, we had big pot-limit games, and very often I lost a lot of money. I didn’t go completely broke, but went very low. Then I started again by playing smaller, all the while moving up very quickly; people trusted me and loved the way I played, so they put me in more and more games, taking a piece along the way. About a month later, I had some money to play again and I gambled high, because I knew that I was the best player and couldn’t just sit there and watch the games. I wanted to be in the games and knew that this was the best way to keep learning. I started with zero, but I knew that even with-out money, I would build and build. So it wasn’t a big deal to lose the money.

I moved to Vegas only in May 2005, because I had a problem with the American Government and I couldn’t visit the US for a full year.

I was coming back from a poker cruise, on the way to the Bellagio event just prior to the World Series, when I was detained by US officials. There was a problem with my name insofar as there was another person by the name of David Benyamine who was a wanted man. I heard some stories about people saying that this guy was a terrorist, which is possible, but I was never officially told. The fact is that my name was flashing on the computer, so that when I entered America, they were waiting to question me. After dealing with this on the way out to the cruise, I was assured that my name would be cleared from the system, but upon my return, the same thing happened. This time, three FBI agents came and questioned me, and by the end of it they said, “He’s totally fine, we’re so sorry, and we wish you good luck in the World Series. Just sign some papers and go.”

However, the immigration agent decided against releasing me, and charged me with playing poker as a professional, which meant I couldn’t enter on a tourist visa, only on a working visa. I had never heard about that before; it had never happened to any other poker player, so it was weird, and maybe he was right, but I didn’t know. I was to be held in a detention place for two days, but because it was the weekend, they couldn’t deport me immediately to France – I was to wait until Monday morning. In any case, it took a week in a state jail before I was deported. It was very tough; there were a lot of things that happened, which I’m not going to go into detail about. I understand that this was all going on post 9/11 and their approach was to be overly cautious, but I paid for it. After that, I went back to France and couldn’t get a visa for a year and three months. During that time, all my friends went to the World Series and I couldn’t join them, but in May 2005 I went back and started to play poker again; and as soon as I could, I took a shot in the Big Game, and it went well for me.

Definitely. Small poker players will enjoy themselves so much there. Also, you have LA not far, which has many great games. For a poker player who’s just learning, Vegas is perfect. For me, I love playing the big games, and having made some great friends, it’s fantastic.

I would say Paris, but it’s the only place I really know. If I had to choose a town in Europe for poker, it would have to be London because of the amount of poker going on there. In Paris, the scene is getting there, because now they are allowing casinos to have poker and a lot of different things are happening.

I like to play tennis, I’ve started playing golf, I love to spend time with my girlfriend [poker player Erica Schoenberg] and our dogs, and just enjoy life. For the last two months, because I’ve been losing pretty big in the Big Game, I’ve been spending time with Erica doing the things we love. It’s not always only about gambling and poker, but it’s a good life to have before babies and “serious stuff” (laughs).

Probably about three days, but I had some very short rest breaks – an hour or two here or there – but I played at least forty-eight hours straight without sleeping. A lot of people will tell you that I am probably the best long-session poker player in the world. I could play two days straight, and play well for those two days. My losses in the Big Game taught me to be a warrior. Earlier in my career I couldn’t play like this, but now I can. So, initially, it had a bad effect in that I probably lost some extra money doing it, but in the last year I have made a lot of money this way. I don’t suggest that people play this way, because I don’t think it’s good to abuse your body. Poker life is already very nocturnal and sometimes you have to stay up for the whole night, but I suggest you try to keep reasonable hours. The problem is that sometimes when there is a good game, when players are playing bad and you are winning a lot, I wouldn’t advise you to stop; that’s the time when you can make two month’s worth of money in two hours. And even though you may not be the best player on the table, you become the best player by being a winner and by having all your senses totally awake, by knowing everything that’s going on, by having perfect timing for everything – that’s not the time to go to bed.

I don’t know if I could say that. I’ve enjoyed a lot of games since I started playing poker, but lost a lot of money in the last few months. I have won a lot in the Big Game, but I’ve had partners. When I started the Big Game, I was playing for 30% and everybody took a piece of me for 70%. Then very quickly I moved up to playing for 100%, but then went down a little bit when I had a very bad streak three months ago. I was getting very unlucky, and went back down to playing for 80%. So I’m still going all right with the money, but I have to be much more careful now, which has been a very good experience, because it has made me a much better poker player. I’m sure that I will win back all the money that I lost within the next two to three years. You know, maybe I will have it in the next three months. Overall, it’s not about having the most money, as long as you have enough money to live well; it’s about enjoying what you do in life.

If you get luckier than the others, it’s definitely possible. When you are suddenly lucky, anything can happen. At the beginning of playing the bigger limits, I was not as good as some of the players; but being lucky, as well as having a competitive nature and a desire to be good, makes you become something, makes you a different person. All of a sudden, I went from being the weakest player on the table to someone who can surprise any competition because of the many things I could do; that made my opponents feel very uncomfortable. Players started to wonder for days and weeks and months whether I was “really that good” or was I just “lucky”? I was only lucky in the beginning, but it made me much better, made me confident, made me aware of what was happening on the table. If I had to give any piece of advice to players, I would tell them to be extremely lucky (laughs).

You can play poker against David at MANSION. com