Griffin Benger Bags Colossus Chip Lead at Playground

Griffin Benger hasn't made a deep WSOP-affiliated run in years, but on the night of May 19 at Playground in Montreal, the former eSports pro bagged 1,300,500 chips to lead Day 1C of the WSOP Circuit's $1,000 Colossus.

That stack nearly doubled the next-closest survivor. Ricardo Cermeno Sandoval, a one-ring Circuit veteran with $202K in lifetime earnings, finished the flight at 729,000. The gap between first and second was wider than the gap between second and fifth.

The Resume Behind the Chips

Benger's $1,645,559 in lifetime tournament earnings puts him in rare company for a player still hunting his first ring.

Benger's WSOP profile lists $1,645,559 in lifetime tournament earnings and two career final tables. He holds zero bracelets and zero Circuit rings. For a player with that much money earned across the felt, the hardware cabinet is conspicuously empty.

Before poker consumed him, Benger competed professionally in StarCraft under the tag "Shadesofgrey," a fact well-documented across eSports and poker media. The crossover pipeline from competitive gaming to tournament poker is real, but few players who've walked it have accumulated north of $1.6M.

What's Around Him

The Day 1C leaderboard at Playground is stacked with Canadian grinders, and Benger isn't the only credentialed name in the top five.

Michael Khan sits third with 531,000 chips. Khan's résumé dwarfs most of the field: one WSOP bracelet, two Circuit rings, 16 career final tables, and $468,437 in lifetime earnings. If anyone at the Colossus final table will have deep-run composure to spare, it's Khan.

Ruben Perceval (527,000) and Jeremie Trepanier (467,000) round out the top five. Perceval carries $80,751 in career earnings and two prior final tables. Trepanier is the unknown quantity with no recorded WSOP earnings history.

Why This Matters for Benger

Circuit rings aren't bracelets. They're won at Caesars-affiliated stops across North America, and the Playground stop in Montreal is one of the most competitive on the schedule. A $1,000 Colossus draws a massive field and pays accordingly.

Benger's two career WSOP final tables prove he can navigate late-stage fields. But those results came years ago, and the absence of any ring or bracelet creates a specific kind of narrative pressure: $1.6M earned, zero pieces of WSOP jewelry.

Leading a Colossus flight is not the same as winning one. Day 2 will merge the surviving stacks from all flights, and 1,300,500 is a comfortable but not insurmountable lead. Khan's bracelet-and-double-ring pedigree, sitting just 770K behind, is a reminder that the final table won't be handed out.

Still, Benger is in the best position he's held at a WSOP-affiliated event in a long time. The chip lead. Home soil. And the one line on his résumé that's still blank.