Rising Star: Benny Glaser

(Photo: Highstakesdb.com)

Every year the World Series of Poker delivers a story that poker players around the world love to read about and dream of repeating themselves. Crazy bracelet bets dominated the early coverage of this year’s WSOP, but nothing beats a story of a relatively unknown player binking two bracelets in quick succession. For 27 year-old Brit, Benny Glaser, this wish came true and he has become the 2016 success story of the WSOP so far. Even his name is perfectly suited to poker and Benny supplements his income by writing on a freelance basis for the poker website HighstakesDB. His twitter handle is @BennyG444.

(Photo: WSOP.com)

Benny entered the $1,500 Omaha Hi-Lo Split-8 or Better along with another 933 players. He went on to beat them all, with recognizable names such as Hendon mobster, Barney Boatman, and Italian pro, Max Pescatori, making the money. His reward for his second WSOP bracelet was $244,103 which allowed him to stump up the $10,000 buy-in for the Hi-Low Split-8 or Better Championship bracelet a couple of days later, with which he continued his excellent run, beating a final table containing formidable players such as Matt Glantz and Todd Brunson for a first prize of $407,194 and the enviable record of being one of the few players to win back-to-back WSOP bracelets.

Benny was not a complete unknown. He won his first WSOP bracelet at the 2015 World Series where he beat players such as Greg Raymer, Dutch Boyd, and Brock Parker in the $1500 Limit 2-7 Triple Draw Lowball event. 388 players had entered that event and Benny took home a first prize of $136,215.

His wins are no fluke and he is fast becoming a name that could rise to the very top of poker. Benny is a respected mixed games specialist who cites his best games as Omaha Hi-Lo, 2-7 Triple Draw, and Limit Hold’em. He can play No Limit Hold’em but prefers to exercise what he sees as a clearer edge in the other games.

His impressive poker resume contains a number of tournament wins since arriving on the poker scene in 2013. In addition to holding three WSOP bracelets, Benny has won a variety of smaller tournaments in Europe. In December 2015 he won the £500 7-Card Stud event at the EPT Prague and then won the €180 WPTN Draw Poker Challenge in the Grand Casino, Brussels in February 2016, beating 21 other players to win €1800. Obviously this is not a huge tournament, but it shows Benny’s prowess at the smaller games and his ability to play for and secure the win in a poker tournament. Winning can be a habit and Benny wins a high percentage of the tournaments he enters. He currently boasts a crazy statistic of winning 50% of the WSOP tournaments he's cashed in at present.

Since his double bracelet win, Benny has remained active in this year's WSOP. He has managed to achieve a fifth-place finish in in the $1 0,000 2-7 Single Draw Championship where he won $62,810 and then he finished in 12th place in the $1,500 2-7 Single Draw for $4,562. It would be no surprise to me if he continued to perform well at this year’s WSOP and who knows, maybe he will win more bracelets. He currently sits just outside the top 10 in the Global Poker Index and is in the running for the WSOP Player of the Year award.

It is pleasing to note that whilst the poker world looks at a single bracelet win as par for the course and somewhat unsensational (I disagree!), we still celebrate two wins as amazing. Perhaps this is a good gauge on the state of poker as a whole as the day when two bracelet wins is seen as unworthy of coverage is perhaps the day when poker hits the buffers for good. It also hits home to me that it appears poker writers can do well at poker and win bracelets! How interesting!

Congratulations to Benny for his bracelet wins and his other successes so far. I am sure this is only the beginning for this extremely talented player who is proving you can do really well at poker even if No-Limit Hold’em is not your best game. Benny is making it look easy when it is anything but!