At the start of this year’s World Series of Poker there were only two poker players who had won the coveted Triple Crown of live poker titles. Both Gavin Griffin and Roland De Wolfe had won an EPT, WPT and WSOP title in their careers but nobody else had managed to match them.
Then in the very first open event of the 2011 WSOP, Jake Cody won a bracelet to go with his EPT Deauville and WPT London titles to win the Triple Crown and now Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier has just won the $10,000 Seven-Card Stud Championship to win his first WSOP bracelet and a Triple Crown of his own!
Grospellier is one of the most recognisable faces on the live tournament circuit, the Frenchman’s flamboyant fashion sense and ultra loose-aggressive style of play make him easy to spot at the tables. Having won the 2008 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event and then WPT Festa al Lago a few months later, Grospellier has had the chance to become a Triple Crown winner for the past couple of years but has never really come close to winning a WSOP event.
The former professional video game player admitted to this being only his second-ever live Stud tournament, which makes besting a final table that was home to the likes of John Hennigan, Alexander Kostitsyn and Chad Brown all the more impressive. He entered heads-up trailing by 2,260,000 to 1,520,000 chips but just over an hour later he looked like he would be heading for the rail as his stack of 250,000 was dwarfed by Steve Landfish’s 3,530,000. However, ElkY went on a real tear and managed to not only even matters up but also take the chiplead.
Over the next three hours the pair passed the chip lead to one another before ElkY started to put some distance between him and his opponent. In the final hand, four and a half hours after heads up had begun, Landfish was all in and at risk holding As4s/3sJs4cTh/7d against Grospellier’s Jc5c/9d5s6s6h/6d. For those of you not well versed in Stud hand histories, Grospellier made a pair of fives on fourth street to take the lead, then improved to two pairs sixes and fives on sixth street. Ladnfish needed the his river card to be a four, ten, jack or ace to take the lead but it turned out that even if he had improved to a better two pair he would still have lost as Grospellier improved to a full house on his last card!
The latest victory for Grospellier cements his claim of being one of the best poker players in the world and he now has almost $8,000,000 in live tournament cashes in his career so far.
