Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier

In this article we give you an insight into how Bertrand Grospellier, aka ‘ElkY’ on PokerStars, has become one of the best MTT poker players in the world, both online and live.

ElkY was born in 1981 in France where he grew up with a passion for video gaming. After years of playing the games he realised he could make a living from it if he could move to Seoul in South Korea and compete in professional gaming tournaments for prize money. He made the move at just 20 years old and began earning himself a reputation as one of the best ‘Starcraft’ gamers in the world. He found himself having great success in the gaming world and landed a three-year sponsorship deal. In these three years he came second in the 2001 World Cyber Games, and first in the 2003 Euro Cyber Games, both major accomplishments.

His first taste of internet poker was just around the corner however, when one of his gamer friends told him about their success at online poker site PokerStars. ElkY was intrigued about how his friend was earning money playing online and created an account at PokerStars. He jumped in at the deep end, playing $1/$2 NLHE and almost paid for it with his whole bankroll. After almost losing all of his bankroll he began reading poker strategy books and articles and was soon beating the NLHE games, multi-tabling both cash tables and SNG’s.

Soon ElkY was crushing the games at PokerStars and was able to quit gaming to take up poker full-time. He also became somewhat of an online legend by becoming the first person at PokerStars to achieve SuperNova and SuperNove Elite status. This took him just over four months, playing the high buy-in sit-and-goes around the clock to earn 1,000,000 FPP’s. By becoming the first player to achieve the status PokerStars signed ElkY and he became a Team PokerStars Pro.

His first big breakthrough on the live poker circuit came in January 2008 when he managed to win the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure defeating 1136 players for a staggering $2 million. He continued making cashes in tournaments, and in October 2008 he claimed another major win. He took down the $15,000 WPT Festa al Lago at Bellagio to win $1.4 million. The amazing thing about winning this tournament was that ElkY eliminated every other player at the final table.

He was back at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in 2009 which proved to be yet another successful trip. He ended up winning the High-Roller event for $433,500 after defeating a final table which included Nick Shulman and Eli Elezra. Throughout the year he continued making final tables and cashes in big events. The most notable was in April 2009 when he finished 3rd in the WPT Seventh Annual Five Star World Poker Classic which earned him a massive $776,245.

Despite travelling so much for live tournaments, ElkY also kept cashing in online tournaments. The most impressive online results were when he won two PokerStars WCOOP events in just a few days which earned him a combined $500,000.

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