Sacre bleu!

There’s at least one Frenchman who doesn’t know how to surrender!

He is David Benyamine, a 35-year-old professional poker player from Paris, France, and he is France’s first winner at the 2008 World Series of Poker (WSOP) in Las Vegas.

Benyamine won WSOP Event #37, a $10,000 buy-in, Omaha hi-lo 8 or better tournament that had 235 participants, 27 payouts and a total prize pool of about $2.2 million.

For the victory, Benyamine earns $535,687.

And his first WSOP championship gold bracelet.

And all the snails he can eat.

Runnerup in the event was Greg Jamison of Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, snagging $331,350.

Third was Jason Gray of Portland, Oregon, USA, who wasn’t too blue about collecting $209,855.

Fourth was Toto Leonidas of Glendale, California, USA, toting home $171,197.

Fifth was Mike “The Mouth” Matusow, also of Las Vegas, chomping on $138,063.

Sixth was Gene Katchalov of New York City, New York, USA, catching and loving $110,450.

Seventh was Ram Vaswani of Hendon, England, winning $88,360.

Eighth was Dave Chiu of Rowland Heights, California, USA, chewing on $71,793.

Ninth was Hieu “Tony” Ma of El Monte, California, USA, earning $55,225.

Tenth was Berry Johnston of Bethany, Oklahoma, USA, cherry-picking $38,658.

Popular poker pro Doyle “Texas Dolly” Brunson entered this event but finished out of the money.

(E-mail Tom Somach at tomsomach@yahoo.com.)