Benjamin Rolle

Benjamin Rolle was born on February 3, 1989, in Cottbus, Germany. Before poker, he played regional football and excelled in Counter-Strike. He discovered poker in 2008 and started with Sit & Go tournaments, earning over $24,000 in his first few years under the online alias "bencb789" on Full Tilt Poker.

After Full Tilt Poker's closure, Rolle shifted his focus to PokerStars and multi-table tournaments (MTTs). He gained worldwide fame by winning the main event of the 2016 World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP), taking home over $1,000,000. This success allowed him to launch the Raise Your Edge training project.

In August 2021, Rolle joined Team PokerStars Pro but ended the cooperation in September 2022. He now frequently plays high-stakes tournaments on online poker, where he competes under his real name.

• 2016 WCOOP $102K Super High-Roller: $1,172,000 win, defeating Isaac Haxton and Igor Kurganov; split heads-up with Fedor Holz.
• 2021 online poker Super MILLION$: $424,850 victory, overcoming a short stack to beat Nick Petrangelo and others.
• 2022 online poker Sunday Million Super HR: $393,222 prize after a heads-up deal with Mikita Badziakouski ($25,500 buy-in).
• 2022 online poker Super MILLION$: $357,739 win, his second title in the event.
• 2025 WSOP Online Main Event: $3,900,000 first prize and a WSOP bracelet, after finishing eighth the previous year.

Rolle is the founder of Raise Your Edge, a poker training platform with over 100,000 users. He has produced a comprehensive MTT course and is known for his exploitative, opponent-focused approach—emphasizing reading opponents and playing extreme strategies over pure GTO play.

Rolle is analytical, disciplined, and explicitly exploit-first. He argues that most players are too afraid to play at extremes and that understanding opponent tendencies is key to winning the most money. He also stresses the importance of bankroll management, having started from $1 SNGs.

Rolle currently lives in Vienna, Austria, where he trains kickboxing twice a week to prepare mentally for long tournament grind. He cites his kickboxing coach, a top Austrian fighter, as teaching him the value of recognizing edges—important for both fighting and poker.

Despite his massive online success, Rolle's live tournament earnings are only $124,090 (Hendon Mob, July 2023). He focuses primarily on online events.

• PokerStars Team Pro (August 2021 – August 2022)
• CoinPoker Ambassador (since November 2024)