The hugely consistent Bertrand Grospellier capped a fine year in 2009 by taking down the WPT Player of the Year title. We hooked up with “ElkY” to see how his last year in poker has panned out.
He’s won almost everything the live and online poker world has to offer but that doesn’t mean this feisty Frenchman is ready to throw in the towel just yet. Known to the world at large as “ElkY”, Bertrand Grospellier has had a meteoric rise from gamer and Korean superstar to international prominence in the poker world, but the former StarCraft player still has a burning passion for the game. He enjoyed a superb year in 2009 which saw him pick up the WPT Player of the Year title (which still belongs to him, at least for a month more) and a momentous WCOOP title, together with a Guinness World Record for good measure. We sat down with one of the world’s best tournament players at the LA Poker Classic to get his views on all things poker.
Bertrand, you’ve made the trip out to LA. Did you get to play any of the earlier events in the series or just the Main Event?
Unfortunately I was in Europe for the EPT so I couldn’t play any other tournaments. I heard that they were really fun though – I wanted to play the one where you had no break at all [the IronMan tournament]. I badly wanted to play the $10,000 as well but there was just no time; there are just too many tournaments now! The structures here are really great – I really love the Main Event structure.
You got off to a flying start in 2009 but how would you compare last year to 2008?
2008 was definitely better but I’m still satisfied with 2009 because I got third in the WPT World Championship as well as winning the WPT Player of the Year. I also won two WCOOPs which really means a lot to me because I began my career playing online. I’d never won a really big online tournament until last year; I had a really great WCOOP in 2008 but I couldn’t didn’t win any events. The World Series and beyond was really disappointing but I guess it’s just variance. Sometimes you have to accept that you’re not going to win every tournament you play.
You got pretty unlucky with that third place in the World Championship after losing a three-way hand with Ran Azor. How disappointed were you with not managing to win that event after having such a strong year on the WPT?
It was definitely a crushing defeat, but I was very short-stacked for most of the tournament. It was very different from the Festa al Lago event that I won [in late 2008] where I was chip leader for half the tournament. I managed to get some momentum going before the final table but I think I made one bad laydown against Ran Azor. It’s kind of hard to play against him because he’s so hard to predict. Overall, I was satisfied with the way I played and if I had have won that three-way all-in I would have had a very good chance to beat [Yevgeniy] Timoshenko.
How satisfying of an achievement was winning WPT Player of the Year for you as a player and where does it rank among your list of accolades?
It was definitely a big achievement. I was disappointed not to win the event itself, but the Player of the Year title was something I worked really hard for. I wasn’t able to play too many WPTs that season, especially at the start, so I’m especially proud of taking the title.
Is it going to be hard to rival last year’s achievements in 2010?
I can do better. My big aim for the year is the World Series [this summer] because it’s the last title that I don’t have. I just want to win every tournament I play, so I’m really focussed this year and hopefully I can do well. I also want to be the first player to win two EPTs. I have a side bet with another French player, Arnaud Mattern, who has also won an EPT title.
As you say, the World Series Main Event in 2009 was another deep run that fizzled out in the later stages. What were your thoughts on that and what was the Main Event like for you?
I think the World Series Main Event is definitely the most disappointing of all because it’s so special. It’s the biggest tournament of the year and you know that once you’re out you have to wait a year to play it again. It has a great structure, the most players, the biggest prize pool – it’s everything, so it was really hard. I was doing so well and I was chip leader and I had so much focus, then I lost with aces against kings, then I lost a few more really big hands before I got knocked out. I felt extremely disappointed afterwards.
Doyle Brunson once said that the worst day of any poker player’s career is the day you bust out of the Main Event of the World Series…
Yeah, I think that’s kind of true – especially when you go deep. It’s always easier to bust earlier than to go deep, because when you bust early you know that there was such a long way to go anyway. But when you hold the chip lead for two days and you’re doing really well it’s always worse. The closer you are to the goal, the harder it is.
Is leaving a legacy in poker something that is important to you?
It’s definitely important. I’m thinking about it more these days, especially because I’ve already won so much and I’m really in a good spot to make history.
After so much success, how do you continue to motivate yourself? Is it hard to feel challenged when you’ve won most of the biggest live and online titles?
No, because poker is always the same game, but at the same time it’s always different. You play with different players and the situations are always changing which always makes it challenging. When you’re a competitor, you always want to win, no matter the circumstances. I’ve won a lot before, but I want to win more. When I lose that drive I probably won’t play as much poker, because if I don’t really want to win I don’t see the point in playing. I think it’s very important to be passionate about the game and really want to win, because if you just play for the money and consider it purely a job, it can be pretty hard – especially when you run bad – and when you don’t love what you’re doing it’s much, much tougher than when you do.
Are you a very competitive person by nature?
Yeah, I’m very competitive. I was always competitive and I think the fact that I lived in South Korea has developed my competitive nature even more. It’s very competitive there – much more so than Europe. In their culture, they play only for first and defeat is even harder for them to take.
We’re seeing a lot more French players coming through the ranks at the moment. Which players should we be looking out for this year?
There are a lot of great of French players at the moment and Arnaud Mattern and Ludovic Lacay are two of the best. Ludovic has been around for a while, but he’s still a great player. I think there will be more young French players coming through this year also because the French online market is going to open up this summer.
Have you had a chance to play with Antoine Saout after his World Series exploits?
I’ve played a little bit with him; he’s very good too. It was a big surprise because he played so well at the Main Event final table that I think a lot of people would agree that he deserved to win that. I think besides Ivey he played the best.
One of the more entertaining highlights of the year from a spectator’s point of view was your involvement with Team Europe in the inaugural Caesars Cup. Why do you think the youthful European team made such light work of the American team?
Some of the American players were a little bit too old school and weren’t used to the structure. The structure was very fast and the European team were mostly young players who learned to play on the internet and were better able to adapt to the pace of the tournament. Obviously there were great players in Team America, but Phil Hellmuth made a lot of mistakes because he’s not very good in that kind of format, so that made it really difficult for the team.
Last year you set a record for the greatest number of SNGs played at one time [see sidebar]. What made you want to attempt that record and how did you cope with playing so many tables at once?
I had the idea when I first started playing and became the first SuperNova on PokerStars. I was known for playing a lot of tables so I thought it would be cool to set up the world record attempt. It happened at the EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo and was just something fun to do. I don’t really play many tables when I play online now – I really try to play short-handed or heads-up cash games, so I can’t play more than six tables. When you play SNGs it’s much easier because after a while it’s push or fold decisions and it becomes very mathematical; you can almost have the perfect move every time. You don’t have so much metagame and so much psychology – it depends on how the other players are playing a little bit, but not so much – so it’s much easier to play many tables. It was still very hard because when you’re playing 30 tables at one time it’s kind of crazy.
Despite being known as an online SNG player, it seems your biggest results have come in MTTs. Which format do you prefer?
I like MTTs more than Sit ‘n Gos, especially when you go deep in one because it’s always more fulfilling. It really gives you a big rush when you go really far in MTTs because they’re so much bigger and I like that feeling.
Looking at your SNG tracker, you’re down a fair bit this year. Is that just a case of a shift in focus to MTTs?
I was down a while ago, yeah. When I first picked up the SuperNova Elite I had to make a lot of points, so I played a large number of SNGs against a lot of really good players at the same time. That was a couple of years ago and this year I really can’t play that many because it’s not as interesting as it used to be. There are a lot more big cash games and tournaments and I don’t have the time to put the hours in anymore. I play online once in a while when I bust early in a tournament, but it’s quite hard because I’m always travelling.
What about your heads-up game? Do you prefer SNGs or cash?
I like to play all different kinds of games because I think it gives you more of a feel for every situation and it’s very important for you to be able to adapt in poker. When you play different games you can adapt to an ante structure, being short-stacked or playing very deep. Cash is better for when you’re playing deep-stacked tournaments and SNGs are better when you are short-stacked and you’re entering that push or fold stage, so it’s important to play all forms of poker to excel.
Like the USA, France has had its own share of problems with the legalisation of poker. Have you done anything to help the legalisation of live poker?
I think it’s going to be legalised this year and I’m just trying to be a good ambassador for poker in France. A lot of people look up to me so it’s very important that I put out the best image of poker that I can. The EPT was very successful there and I think WPT [Grand Prix de] Paris is going to be very successful also. We’ve seen a lot more French players doing well like Antoine Saout, as I say, so definitely there’s a lot of hope for French poker.
So we’ll see you hitting that final table at the Aviation Club come May? Definitely. I really love to play in France because it’s like playing on home ground and I never get to play there much because I’m always on the road playing EPTs and WPT events in the States. It’s time to take one down in France. |
