Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier found himself a week late to the WSOP due to a stolen passport and French bureaucracy. But things could’ve been worse according to the bracelet winner.
“Because I was in Toronto I could only go back to France and because I live in London and they had my file there it took even longer,” ElkY said.
“My fear at first, I thought it was gonna take three weeks or a month but it only took like 10 days so it wasn’t that bad I guess.”
ElkY Loses Passport in Toronto, Stranded in Paris
It was a legal jigzaw puzzle.
The French pro who lived in London suffered a theft in Canada.
The thieves who took off with his bag also duped anyone who had ElkY on their Fantasy Poker Team since he now had to wait for everything to get sorted out before he could get out to Las Vegas.
“I was gonna play most of the events but then I was like, ‘You know what? Sucks, but like, worse things could happen.” ElkY said.
“I guess I’m one week fresher. I got to relax a lot.”
It was a positive way to look at things and ElkY’s freshness has already seen him score two cashes.
A few days after arriving, ElkY finished 16th in the $10,000 H.O.R.S.E. and cashed for $21,958. He followed that up with a 49th-place finish in the $5,000 NLHE 6-Max two days later.
Looking Forward to Mix-Game Action
While he’s enjoying some freshness, ElkY regrets missing out on some tournaments. Especially since French bureaucracy also finds a way to prevent ElkY from playing them the rest of the year.
“The $25K [Heads-up Championship] was gonna be really nice obviously. Also the $10K 2-7 [Single Draw], I really like that game and I can never play it anywhere else, so it sucks. The $10k Triple Draw is also one that I’m sad I missed,” ElkY said.
“On the French site you can not play mixed games, they are like illegal. When I play the EPTs also, almost all the mixed game tournaments are before the high roller so I skip them.”
But now ElkY has lots of mixed games to play. He’s particularly looking forward to the remaining $10K championships and the $50,000 Poker Player’s Championship.
ElkY has good reason to like the championships since four of his 22 WSOP cashes come from them, including his largest two.
In 2011, ElkY scored serious WSOP cash when he finished 3rd in the $10,000 NLHE 6-Max championship and earned $447,074. His second biggest WSOP cash gave the former StarCraft champion his first WSOP bracelet.
ElkY, who had never played a live Seven Card Stud tournament, decided to put up $10,000 for the Seven-Card Stud Championship. He did fairly well and won the thing, outlasting a field of 126 players and taking home $331,639.
Since then, ElkY decided to actually start studying mixed games. He said there are no plans to do anything wild with his hair this year though, just standard bleach-blonde spikes.
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