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  During this year's World Series of Poker we have seen a couple of people who held the tag "The best player to never win a bracelet" finally shed that particular legacy. Most notable among these people was Erick Lindgren who looked like somebody had kicked a three ton weight off his back after he raised his well earned WSOP bracelet. Unfortunately, that weight fell squarely on David Benyamine who had to be wondering when, after making three final tables this year, his time would come. Well David's weight would not be that long, it turns out that 37 was his lucky number. In a "come from behind" win, David claimed the Event #37 championship.



  It was an exhausting day for all involved. First of all, carrying on the tradition of oversized fields for a final day that seems to be the legacy of the 2008 WSOP, there were 18 players competing at the start. It was a full twenty minutes before the first player fell. Of course this nicely balanced off by the fact that it took about 20 seconds for the next person to find their way to the rail. Both players were knocked from the tournament by Tony Ma, who looked like a wrecking crew in the final day's early goings.



  David Benyamine started the day at about even par with most of the chip leaders and eventually took the lead after ripping large pieces off of Ram Vaswani's stack and adding them to his own. Vaswani got a little of it back when he eliminated 1986 WSOP Champion Berry Johnston in 10th place. The victory was not all it could have been for Vaswani. The hand before Benyamine had delivered a crippling blow to Berry, and had taken possession of most of his chips.



  The soundtrack of most of the day was the running of Mike Matusow's mouth. He backed up his bravado a mere few hands into the final table when he tripled the size of his stack and became a legitimate threat to win the bracelet.



  Toto Leonidas, who had added a fairly impressive number of chips to his own stack after punting the previously impressive Tony Ma from the table in 9th place, set his sights on the Mouth.



  Despite some impressive chipping up early in the final table, Matusow played some very uneven poker and squandered much of his stack. As the Persian King, Xerxes learned over a thousand years ago, tackling someone named Leonidas is difficult even when you have the advantage; Matusow was short stacked and in the end his play couldn't back up his mouth. He was eliminated in 5th place from the table.



  The table became a more comfortable and quiet place with Matusow exercising his self-esteem issues, but Leonidas was thanked for his efforts by being knocked from contention in 4th place by a surging David Benyamine.



  Jason Gray was the next to be victimized by Benyamine who the poker gods had apparently taken a fancy to. David took possession of most of Gray's stack during a hand where a river card saved Benyamine by completing a full house. Right after that, he took the few chips Jason Gray had and sent him packing in 3rd place.



  Benyamine was heads-up against Greg Jamison with a 3 to 1 chip lead and a whole lot of momentum. Jamison made a dent in David's stack by taking two consecutive hands, but in the end he was all in on the final hand and drawing dead as David had made yet another full house, this time on the turn.



  David Benyamine was cool in his victory, and despite a weight being taken off his shoulders, claimed that he didn't feel he had anything to prove. Considering how long the day was, and how hard fought the bracelet ultimately was, we will let him get away with this lie. The tag of "the best player never to win a bracelet" has probably fallen on Gus Hansen now.