Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier – Poker Player profile
‘ElkY’ has become one of the hottest names in poker . The Frenchman was born on 8th February, 1981, and grew up in his hometown Melun as an avid video gamer. His passion for gaming was so strong that at only 20 years-old, he moved to Seoul in South Korea. He moved here to pursue his dream of being a professional video gamer and entered various gaming tournaments. His gaming alias was ‘ElkY’ which has stayed with him as he made the transition to poker. As a gamer he became one of the best StarCraft players in the world and won a title at the 2003 Euro Cyber Games, adding to his second-place finish at the 200 World Cyber Games. ‘ElkY’ was so good that he recieved sponsorship which enabled him to be a pro gamer.
It was actually a ‘gaming friend’ who introduced ‘ElkY’ to the world of internet poker. He joined PokerStars.com which is the site his friend was a regular on, and after making a deposit he almost lost all of his bankroll by jumping head first into the $1/$2 NLHE games. ‘ElkY’ found himself immediately in love with the game however and studied daily to become a better player. After only a few months he was earning more money than he could have dreamed of in the comfort of his own home. This led to him quitting his career as a pro gamer and instead he focused on the PokerStars cash games and sit-and-goes.
Soon ‘ElkY’ was taking the games by storm on PokerStars and was already attracting railbirds to his games. He shot to the poker headlines in 2006 however, when he became the first person to ahieve SuperNova VIP status at PokerStars.com. He did this by accumulating 100,000 FPP’s in less than three weeks! He was also the first person to achieve SuperNova Elite status after accumulating a staggering 1,000,000 FPP’s in just under 5 months. He achieved these extraordinary feats by playing high-stake sit-and-goes as well as cash games. After becoming the first person to crack both these levels, PokerStars approached ‘ElkY’ and he signed on as a member of Team PokerStars Pro.
Now that he had signed with PokerStars, he began travelling the live poker tournament circuit representing them. In July 2006 ‘ElkY’ was in Las Vegas for his first WSOP appearance and managed to cash in a NLHE side event finishing 37th out of a field of 191 entrants. Next he travelled back to Europe where he would represent PokerStars at the European Poker Tour (EPT) events. He finished 16th in EPT Baden in 2006, then in January 2007 he narrowly missed out on his first live tournament win. At the Scandinaian Open he finished runner-up to Magnus Petersson for a $399,953 payday, but was still disappointed he didn’t take down the title to become an EPT Champion. ‘ElkY’ continued to post impressive results online throughout 2007 and cashed three times in his second appearance at the WSOP.
2008 was ‘ElkY’s breakthrough year on the live poker tournament circuit however and saw him ammass $3.6 million in live earnings alone, add to this his online winnings and private cash games and it is no wonder he is considered one of the greatest MTT players in the world. These millions came from ‘ElkY’ capturing both an EPT and WPT title. Firstly in January 2008, he was at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure where he overcame a fierld of 1186 players to capture the title and the $2 million first prize money. Then in October 2008 he won his first WPT title at the 6th Annual Festa Al Lago Classic. Once again ‘ElkY’ proved why he was being called one of the greatest poker players in the world by defeating a field of 368 players to win the $1.4 million first prize money.
2009 proved to be another successful year for ‘ElkY’. He ammassed $1.6 million in live tournament winnings. This included a win at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure again, this time in the High-Roller event which he took down for $433,500. He followed this up with a third-place finish in the televised NBC National Heads-Up Championships where he earned $125,000, then narrowly missed out on his second WPT title. The Seventh Annual Five Star World Poker Classic attracted 338 players and ‘ElkY’ made the final-table, but could only manage to finish in third-place for $776,245 after Yevgeniy ‘Jovial Gent’ Timoshenko took down the title. He also enjoyed great online MTT success in 2009 by claiming victory in two PokerStars WCOOP events in only a few days. He won around $500,000 combined for these two victories.
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