Bertrand "Elky" Grospellier

Bertrand Grospellier, better known by his online username ‘ElkY’, is renowned as one of poker’s strongest tournament players, and is just one of five people to have accomplished poker’s Triple Crown.

ElkY developed a competitive streak from a young age, becoming a professional video game player in his teenage years. ElkY was one of the top ranked StarCraft players in the world, and was one of South Korea’s first generation of foreign players. StarCraft is so immensely popular in South Korea that there are two television channels dedicated to the game, and it is considered one of the country’s major sports.

ElkY achieved multiple top finishes within the StarCraft community, including 2nd place at the World Cyber Games in 2001. Eventually, ElkY began to make the transition towards poker when realising the potential financial profits, and it quickly became evident that much of his StarCraft skillset was transferrable to the poker tables. Specifically, the micro management skills necessary in StarCraft have been instrumental in ElkY’s online multi-tabling prowess. It was this skill at multi tabling that helped ElkY become the first PokerStars user to gain the Supernova Elite VIP status, achieving this in just four and a half months of play, which must have entailed some serious grinding.

ElkY has also achieved massive success in the live tournament circuit: he became the fourth person to win poker’s Triple Crown consisting of European Poker Tour, World Poker Tour and World Series of Poker titles.

ElkY’s first major tournament cash was in the 2007 Copenhagen EPT, where he finished 2nd for $399,953, before he went on to win his first EPT in early 2008 taking down the Pokerstars’ Caribbean Adventure for a $2,000,000 cash. It was in October of the same year that the Frenchman won a WPT, as he won the WPT Championship for $1,411,015. Despite winning these two events in such a short space of time, ElkY had to wait to win his first WSOP bracelet. It was not an overly long wait however, with ElkY picking up his bracelet in 2011, as he won the $10,000 Seven Card Stud Championship to win $331,639 and showing his versatility in the process.

ElkY has enjoyed fantastic tournament success, and at 32 he is showing no signs of slowing down.