Bertrand "Elky" Grospellier

Bertrand "Elky" Grospellier has become one of the most successful online poker players of all time. He is also one of the greatest video game players of all time. Clearly the success that he has had as a gamer has helped to make him a great poker player, he is not the first gamer to make the switch. The goal for Grospellier now is to transfer that success to live games.

Bertrand Grospellier first became famous as a gamer. He has been very successful at a number of games in particular Starcraft. In parts of the world, particularly Korea, gaming is a hugely popular spectator sport. The big tournaments appear on television and large crowds show up to watch the games live. As a young man Grospellier moved to Korea in order to become a professional gamer. In this he was spectacularly successful as he became the most successful player of all time. He has finished in the top ten at every world cyber games that has ever been held.

It turns out that video games are the ideal training ground for poker. A lot of the skills that are used in video games are also used in poker. In particular trying to figure out what your opponent is going to do and how to counter it. Bertrand Grospellier put this training to good use as he quickly became one of the top online poker players in the world. He started out like most players buy playing for small stakes but as he started winning more and more money he started playing for larger stakes. Soon he was playing for some of the largest stakes ever played for online.

Soon Bertrand Grospellier was entering online tournaments several of which he won. Included in this was a tournament that qualified him to play in the World Series of Poker. This was his first taste of playing live poker. So far his results in live tournaments have been mediocre, certainly not to the same level as his results online. He has had some finishes in the money but he has so far not won a tournament. The feeling seems to be that he needs to change the way that he plays if he wants to win more live tournaments.

Despite his limited success in live tournaments he remains one of the top online players in the world. In addition to some major tournament wins Bertrand Grospellier has won a great deal of money in cash games. Whether or not he is ever able to start winning live tournaments remains to be seen but his online success is beyond dispute. A lot of the difference seems to be that there are different skills required to win at live poker than are required at online poker. This has a lot to do with the fact that when you can actually see your opponents it is much easier to read them.