Player Spotlight: Benjamin Pollak
Benjamin Pollak’s previous best finish in the WSOP Main Event was 27th place in 2013 for $285,488. Pollak is a French tournament pro who will exceed $3 million in lifetime tournament earnings and possibly much, much more by the time this event comes to a conclusion on Saturday.
Pollak started today with about 8 million in chips, and within the first few levels, he worked his stack up to his current count of 32 million. He had a similar run on Day 5 when he started with 240,000 and 12 big blinds. Within the first two hours, he ran it up to 4 million.
“I came into Day 5 with 12 big blinds and built it to 4 million in two hours. It was the biggest rush I’ve had in the last 10 years. I got a lot of value hands and got paid most of the time.”
Pollak managed to knock out the Day 6 chip leader, Christian Pham, shortly before the second break of the day.
“It was a crazy hand. We played a lot together yesterday, and I knew he could call with a lot of hands. So I shoved. He was very loose; he called me with ace-three of hearts. So he only had seven outs against me for a huge pot.”
With 15 players left, Pollak’s spot at the final table is not guaranteed, and he acknowledged how uncertain the future can be in a poker tournament. He is now one of three French players remaining in the final 15. He went to the same engineering school as his recently eliminated countryman, Alexandre Reard.
Pollak worked for about three months as an engineer before deciding he would give poker a try. He gave himself a year and a half to succeed in poker, and so far, the rest is history. Depending on how the next few days go, Pollak could be in store for something even more historic — becoming the first French WSOP Main Event Champion.