bfineman Picture courtesy of Poker Listings.Ben Fineman is one of the few tournament players to be making considerable money from the game both online and live.
Until recently, the Las Vegas native was probably better known for his offline exploits rather than his online alias of ‘bfineman’ (or ‘bmf823’ on Full Tilt). After all, he has live tourney prizes in excess of $600,000, including two enormous sixfigure scores. At the 2007 WSOP he final tabled the $3,000 NLH Event (eventually finishing 5th for $100,431) and earned himself considerable TV time in the process (this is probably natural considering Phil Hellmuth was sitting on his right). In fact, he was making a real run at the bracelet before his AK couldn’t hold up against K10 allin preflop and was forced to push his short stack in with Q3 shortly after. Check out the key moments below:
And in April 2008 Fineman bettered that, finishing second in a WSOPC Event at Caesars Palace for a cool $257,585. He actually lost the headsup battle to none other than Allen Cunningham, who said of Fineman after the tournament: “He just seemed like a really solid player”. (bfineman had actually taken down the $1,000 Event for $73,566 just 8 days earlier!)
But over the last 6 months his online player has seemingly taken to a new level, shooting up the Pocket Fives Rankings and raking in several huge scores. A lot of this came in just 5 days on Full Tilt in August: on the 8th he final tabled FTOPS Event #14 ($300 ReBuys, 7th for $20,835) before taking down the $65k GTD for $17,738 just 2 days later. Then, on the 12th he produced a stunning performance to beat a stacked field and take down FTOPS Event #12 ($1,000 NLH) for a cool $300,000 (the likes of Kevin Saul, Steve ‘gboro780’ Gross & stevesbets were all in the final 20). He followed this up on PokerStars with 2 victories in the $100 ReBuys (over $67,000 combined), a second in the Sunday WarmUp ($75,000) and a 3rd in the Super Tuesday (3rd, $42,630) before the year was out – all in all, a stunning end to the year by anyone’s standards.
‘bfineman’ has been widely respected as one of the top online players for a long time but it has taken this recent rush for his star to really shine – expect to see him on a few more WSOP televised tables in future series.
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