WSOP November Nine Profile -- Antoine SaoutFrench Pro Has Only Been Playing Poker for Two Years |
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Antoine Saout had $50 and a dream. It turns out that was all he needed.
Ever since he won a $50 satellite on Everest Poker and navigated his way through more than 6,000 competitors at the World Series of Poker main event, Saout has been in poker’s most intense spotlight.
But he was performed more than admirably with the added scrutiny, recording three cashes in three major events since he left the Rio in Las Vegas last August. He finished 13th in the Spanish Poker Tour — Vilamoura main event and 40th in the WPT Marrakech main event, and stunned much of the poker community when he and fellow November Nine member James Akenhead final-tabled the World Series of Poker Europe main event earlier this month.
Saout finished in seventh, while Akenhead placed ninth.
The young French pro believes that if he were to beat the long odds and come from his eighth-place position to take down the WSOP title in fewer than two weeks time, it could lead to a bit of a poker boom in his country.
“I think it could help the image of poker, which is not always well regarded,” Saout said. “There has always been passion for the game in France … This brings hope to lots of players who wish to follow in my wake.”
Like many poker players in their mid-twenties, Saout’s initiation to the game is a familiar one.
“The first time I really played poker was two years ago on the Web after seeing my sister playing from time to time on Everest Poker, where she had an account,” said Saout. “I did the same and created an account on the site, after learning the rules, and little by little discovered how to play true poker.”
Saout will represent Everest Poker at the main event final table. Saout wasn’t the only Everest Poker player psyched that he made the final table. The site had a promotion that divvied up $1 million to all of its qualifiers if one of them made it to November. Fifty-one players collected nearly $20,000 apiece, courtesy of Saout and Everest Poker.
The poker site is proud to consider Saout one of its own.
“France is where Everest Poker first launched, and to have a French player on the final table who qualified with us is very exciting,” said the site’s poker director, Sandrine Mangia-Park. “He joins an increasingly well-respected team of real poker players who all support each other in the biggest tournaments around the world.”
With just two years of playing under his belt, Saout’s meteoric rise to the November Nine has been particularly impressive. But while he now has a seven-figure score to his name, he admits that it hasn’t always been easy to convince friends and family to support his decision to focus full-time on poker.
“At first, indeed, my family wasn’t happy about it, seeing me spending my time on the computer the whole day,” said Saout. “They tried to convince me to find a ‘real’ job and put poker aside, which I did for a while in 2008 for four months during the summer.”
But the poker itch soon returned, and after a few months of solid results and one very significant performance in the main event, Saout’s family has become more accepting of his new profession.
“I went back to Poker, and since the beginning of this year, my mother is truly being supportive after seeing my good results,” said Saout. “Now, she’s very proud of me, of course.”
The French pro has his work cut out for him if he hopes to win it all in November. Entering the final table eighth in chips, he realizes the odds are against him. Still, he knows he has a shot.
“I might need a little bit of luck in the beginning to have a more comfortable stack,” said Saout. “But I see myself more or less at the same level [as the other players].”
An improbable comeback-win out of Saout could start a poker explosion in France in a year when players from the country have excelled.
“This year has been a great year for French poker, with almost all of the well-known professional players from France making it to the last 200 players in the main event, with three in in the final 27,” said Saout. Fellow countrymen Ludovic Lacay and Francois Balmigere finished in 16th place and 25th place for $500,557 and $352,832, respectively.
It has also been a great year for France’s Bertrand ‘Elky’ Grospellier, who had four six-figure scores in 2009 — including a third-place finish in April’s Five-Star World Poker Classic for $776,245 — to follow up his $1.4 million win at the WPT Festa al Lago Classic in October 2008. Grospellier finished in 122nd place in this year’s main event.
While French pros continue to rack up impressive results, they still haven’t gotten over that proverbial WSOP hump. According to the WSOP archives, the last French player to make the main-event final table was Marc Brochard, who finished in eighth place in 1998. No one from France has ever won the main event.
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