Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier

A former pro StarCraft player, ElkY turned his attentions to poker in 2005 and promptly set about conquering the game. Now a member of Team PokerStars, he was the first player to make Supernova status on the site in 2006 and also the first to make Supernova Elite in 2007. He’s one of the few players respected by his peers in both the online and live arenas and flits effortlessly between the two. And whatever David Benyamine may claim, ElkY is the most famous poker player in France.

Learning his craft

‘When I first started playing online I lost for the first two months. I was playing $ 1/$ 2 no-limit cash and had no clue what I was doing. It wasn’t a good idea! But I learnt progressively through playing as well as talking to friends and reading some books. I learnt every way I could as I had an eager desire to become a winning player.’

‘StarCraft helped my ability to multi-table online a lot. It made my hand-eye co-ordination very fast and helped me play as many tables as I wanted. I’d play 14-16 tables when I was playing nine-handed sit-and-gos. These days I play a lot of heads-up and short-handed so I play fewer tables.’

‘Lots of skills transfer but the most important skill in all the games I’ve played at a high level is that you’ve got to be very strong mentally. In StarCraft you’d play the finals in front of 20,000 people and there’d be a lot of pressure. I could handle the pressure better than some of my opponents and would beat players who were better than me in practice games. In poker there’s always a lot of pressure and I feel I handle that well.’

‘You’ve also got to stay one step in front of your opponent in StarCraft, even though you’ve got incomplete information, and it’s the same in poker. You have to guess, anticipate and be ready for anything your opponent does so you’re already set to counter that move. It’s important to plan your hand and be ready for any outcome possible.’

Online or live?

‘I’m both an online and live player right now, but being from online originally has given me an edge. I’ve played so many hands online [ElkY says he’s played around three million hands on PokerStars] that I’ve seen a lot of situations and gained a lot of experience for live play.’

‘I think online players have better fundamentals than live players, which is often down to playing more hands. Also, when you play live there is more information available, such as physical tells, and it’s easy to rely on these. Online you don’t have that so it’s more of a technical game. You have to know the maths of every situation and read opponents using betting patterns. The online games are also usually tougher because a lot of live players are weaker than online players.’

‘The PCA [the EPT event in the Bahamas in January 2008] was definitely tougher than your regular EPT because so many good online players were in the tournament. It definitely made me more proud to win, especially since I’m from the online world. That was very important for me.’

His image

‘People have very mixed opinions about how I play. People think I’m just crazy all the time but actually I’m a lot more restrained than people realise. I like them to think I’m crazy! I think the most important thing is to adapt to the situation, especially these days since there is so much information available and the average player’s ability level has gone up so much due to this. I don’t think you can just use one style. You have to change gears and adapt to the table dynamics and your image at the table – that’s crucial.’

‘I think one of my strengths is changing gears. I’m playing to win only – I’m absolutely fearless. I never think about my tournament life and am not afraid to bust out on the bubble. If the situation will help me win the tournament I will take the shot. That helps me a lot. My memory is also very good and I’ve got a great ability to focus for long periods of time. I’d often play StarCraft for 10 hours a day, which required immense focus. Sometimes playing live poker can seem really slow and it seems very easy to focus. When we only play eight hours a day it seems too short – I want to play longer so people are tired and make mistakes.’

‘I’m not very good at laying hands down; I hate giving up pots. Whenever I’m in a pot I try to think of every way possible to win the pot. Even if I know I have to do something crazy, I still might do it because I don’t want to let the pot go. Sometimes when I have a big stack I might get too confident and I try to win every pot when I don’t need to.’

‘The EPT is definitely bigger than the WPT now in my mind. Tournaments in general are definitely getting harder. But I’ll definitely be playing poker for the next few years – I want to get as good as possible. I love the game and I love what I’m doing, and I wake up every day happy to play poker. If one day I don’t, then maybe things will change.’

Poker in France

‘There are a lot of talented young French players coming through. There’s a lot of poker in casinos in France now – it’s very popular. There’s some poker on television in France although the law is still complicated.’

ElkY’s friend Jacques Zaicik chimes in, saying, ‘ElkY is the most famous poker player in France. An example of this is when I was having a business meeting in a coffee shop in France with ElkY and a female co-worker. Her 12-year-old son turned up, saw ElkY and said, “Oh my god, you’re ElkY.” The next day he went to school and told everyone he met ElkY and they didn’t believe him!’