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Team PokerStars Pro - Bertrand Grospellier
Bertrand Grospellier
Young Frenchman Bertrand " ElkY" Grospellier’s route into poker will be a familiar one to many of today's young online players. Like many of them, he found that the skills he developed as a Gamer (for the older generation that translates to Computer Game Player) were readily transferable to the poker world.
Bertrand has won numerous gaming tournaments and placed in the top ten in every World Cyber Games competition he has entered, including a second place finish in the first World Cyber Games in 2001. He is a virtual gaming superstar in South Korea, where he has lived since 2001. Gaming is very popular in South Korea, with 3 T.V. channels dedicated to it, much like ESPN is dedicated to sports in North America. The finals of the Korean Pro Gaming leagues get audiences of up to 20,000, packed into a stadium to watch the top 2 players battle it out on their computer screens. The top players play professionally and can gain sponsorship deals from companies. Bertrand was one of the top ranked "Starcraft" players in Korea, using the screen name ElkY, and was able to secure a sponsorship deal with AMD Korea.
The key skills for gamers are to be able to predict what an opponent is going to do, to outsmart their opponents, think ahead and set traps, be able to think quickly and to have quick mouse reaction times. Anybody with these types of skills already developed will have an advantage in learning online poker. A close friend who had begun playing poker on PokerStars.com advised ElkY to put his gaming skills to the test at online poker and very quickly became adept.
Poker has proven much more profitable for Grospellier than Gaming ever was, and for the past couple of years he has been a full-time online poker professional. He plays Texas holdem cash games as well as many of the largest online tournaments. Bertrand is known to play a phenomenal 12 to 14 tables at one time. ElkY has qualified online for the *WSOP each of the last two years. In August 2006, one of his biggest online wins came when he outlasted a large field to claim a first place prize of $57,000. But despite also having become a regular on the live scene in recent years, ElkY had yet to find that all-important tournament victory that would show the world he was more than just an internet specialist. All that changed when, in January 2008, he won the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, beating 1,136 players and taking home $2,000,000. With live tournament earnings now totalling $2,542,699, ElkY had truly arrived.
ElkY is constantly attempting to improve his skills by learning and adapting to new challenges. When he moved to Korea, he realised he couldn’t beat the Koreans by trying to play like them, so he altered his strategy specifically to counter the Korean style, while at the same time learning the Korean way and incorporating what he learned from their best players into his game.
He has been able to transfer this style of learning to the poker world where he constantly challenges himself.
His other interests include: long distance running, movies and travelling. He is also fluent in French, English and Korean.
* World Series of Poker and WSOP are trademarks of Harrah's License Company, LLC ("Harrah's"). Harrah's does not sponsor or endorse, and is not associated or affiliated with, PokerStars or its products, services, promotions or tournaments.
