Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier has won his career’s second gold bracelet in World Series of Poker Europe. He has been crowned as the final champion at Rozvadov’s Kings Resort. Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier beat Avraham Dayan to win the title and has claimed a prize of €190,375.
The 9 days event saw 2738 entering into the competition which led to a whopping prize pool of €1,300,550. A significant portion of it was used to pay 313 players which advanced to the second day. On the final day, just 11 of them returned to their seats to decide on the 15th WSOP bracelet winner.
Grospellier was a top-rank player of WarCraftIII and StarCraft and has since then taken on top spot in French all-time money poker list with over $14 million cash. After Roger Hairabedian, he is the second Frenchman to have won the bracelet. Grospellier won his first bracelet in the year 2011. This was when he had won the event of $10,000 Seven Card Stud for $331,639. He had received this after 5-6 years of playing and it was 8 years ago.
When asked about his magnificent win, Grospellier said,
“It means a lot because it is so hard to get one.” The win is special for him as it is a large field where it is difficult to secure a win.
Sure, where there are more than 2500 entries for a field, one has to be talented enough to win. Not to mention, one has to play well, too, this is a rare opportunity. He says that he was only 2 cards away from busting 5 but now he is in the first position.
Grospellier has only entered the competition thrice and also had one min-cash. Here, he had busted the last hand of respective day 1. He then went on to secure his spot for day 2 on the second day.
The final day of the match also included Shaun Deeb. He came short in his bid to be the first one to win two consecutive titles of WSOP Player of the Year. Other noteworthy players like Mick Heder, Pasquale Brocco, and Marian Kubis claimed big scored but had chickened out when the duel for title gone moved up.
Grospellier, said, “It was quite tough because I lost a lot of pots early, the blinds go up pretty quick, and it is not forgiving.”
He shoved jack-ten for blinds and small blind-ace-king and he won the hand. Again, of the same guy, he won ace-king against king-jack. Even though his initial plan was low variance play, things didn’t work out as per expectations.
Becker proceeded from chip leader to 5th position finisher when he played against Grospellier. Less than 15 minutes later, the head-up dual had already been set. With ace-9 against ace-8 suited of ‘ElkY’, Mick hedger got in and eight hit flop leaving Dane all empty-handed. A few moments later, Marian Kubis played ace-6 against ace-jack of Grospellier. The duel for the gold bracelet continued for 90 minutes with a break in between till Grospellier came out as the winner.
