Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier: Training His Way to the Next Level

Those with aspirations of becoming the greatest at something will often find inspirational people, role models within the field, whom they strive to emulate. Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, who packs as great a poker resume as any 28-year-old can, is no different. However, in his quest to become the world’s greatest poker player, he chose a rather unorthodox poker muse — Leonardo da Vinci.

In an effort to cultivate his genius and maximize the time he spent while awake, ElkY took to an unusual sleep method, called polyphasic sleeping, which he had read that da Vinci had practiced. He slept for 15 minutes every four hours rather than the normal eight-hour block. While this sleep schedule ultimately wound up biting him in the butt as he lost thousands of dollars playing high-stakes sit-and-gos, it perfectly illustrates the extreme measures to which he will go to be the best.

ElkY is even physically training to become a better poker player. He has hired a former tennis pro to be his coach, manager, and agent, and his coach keeps him in a focused regimen of healthy eating and exercising. The idea of a poker pro training — as one would for a sport — and hiring a non-poker coach is relatively new, but ElkY obviously does not shy away from trying new things in his attempt to achieve greatness.

And his quest isn’t going badly, at all. He was signed as a Team PokerStars Pro before he’d even had a major live-tournament score, a fairly unusual feat in the poker world. A fabled multitable player, one of PokerStars’ highest earners, and the first player ever to reach the Supernova Elite level in the PokerStars VIP Club, the French native established a cult following online, and would soon make his mark on live tournaments around the globe.

Soon after he landed on Team PokerStars, ElkY landed some major scores that made the entire poker community take notice. In 2007, he finished second in the European Poker Tour event in Copenhagen, for a payday of nearly $400,000. One year later, in January 2008, he made his biggest score to date and racked up his first-ever outright win when he became the last man standing in the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) main event, for a whopping $2 million. However, that wasn’t to be his last major first-place finish, by a long shot. Later in 2008, he played in the Bellagio Festa al Lago Classic main event, defeating fellow poker pro Nam Le heads up for his first World Poker Tour title and more than $1.4 million. All told, in 2008, he finished third in the Card Player Player of the Year standings by racking up 10 tournament cashes worth a combined $3.6 million.

ElkY is back to his winning ways in 2009. His most recent win was back at the PCA, this time in the high-roller event with a $24,500 buy-in. He defeated an obviously stacked final table to pocket $434,000. He also finished in the “Final Four” at the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship, for $125,000.

As of this writing, ElkY has nearly $5 million in live-tournament winnings. And “as of this writing” is particularly appropriate for ElkY, because at the rate of his success, his lifetime-winnings tally ticks upward on a seemingly weekly basis.

ElkY’s nontraditional life as a poker pro was preceded by a nontraditional life as a professional video-game player in Korea. He had face-time on TV before he’d ever made a televised final table of a major poker tournament, as he got “heads up” for championships when playing Starcraft, a real-time strategy war game for the computer.

While playing video games for a living, he heard of the wealth that he could achieve by playing online poker. The complex decisions involved in Starcraft, along with his competitive nature, made online poker a natural fit for him; plus, the transition from one computer game to another (the virtual felts) was pretty painless.

However, the transition from a computer screen to clay chips, real felt, and flesh-and-blood opponents can be a bit more daunting …

Shawn Patrick Green: What did you have to get accustomed to in order to successfully make the transition from online to live poker?

Bertrand Grospellier: First off, when you play online, the chip counts are written on the screen at all times, so it’s very easy to adapt. In live poker, if you miss a few hands and don’t pay attention, a guy might get some chips and you don’t know exactly how much he has, and that can make a big difference with your raise-sizing. That’s why, with so many players, when they raise and a player who is a little bit shorter than them moves in, they get confused and don’t know what to do. They don’t always ask for a count, and they don’t know exactly how much the guy has at the table. I always try to be aware of how many chips my opponents have at the table, especially when I have a lot of chips, because when I don’t have many chips, it doesn’t matter as much.

There is a lot more deep-stack play in live tournaments. There are a few online tournaments, like the PokerStars WCOOP [World Championship of Online Poker] main event, where you’re really deep-stacked, but for most online tournaments, you’re never more than 20 or 30 BBs [big blinds] deep for a long part of the tournament. It’s very different when you have 20 or 30 compared to when you have 60 or 70. Since I was a cash-game player, it helped me to adapt to deep-stack play.

SPG: What about the endurance factor in live tournaments? Was that ever a problem for you, sitting at a single table for hours on end?

BG: It was never much of a problem for me, because I played very long sessions online to get to Supernova [status on PokerStars] and, before poker, when I was playing video games. Now it’s even easier because I have my coach, who helps me physically train for when a tournament gets long. It matters a lot, because at the end, if you’re tired after 12 hours of poker, it’s easy to make small mistakes, and the small mistakes can turn into a really big problem, especially these days, because people are improving so much. It’s very important now to maintain your A-game and your edge.

SPG: So, you obviously don’t think it’s ridiculous that poker players who want to excel at the game should train physically for it.

BG: No, they have to. It usually helps — although for some tournaments, you have to play for only six or seven hours. But in the high-roller event in the Bahamas, we started at noon and finished at 4 a.m. So, in those kinds of tournaments, it’s really important to be fit and focused. When you’re fit, it helps you to be mentally focused for longer periods of time. If you’re a great player and you’re not fit, you’re still going to make great moves, but at the end of the day, when you last a long time, you might not be able to be as sharp, and you may make more mistakes. It can make a big difference.

SPG: Aside from staying in shape physically, is there anything you do to train yourself mentally for the game?

BG: I don’t do that much mental training. I was lucky, because since I was playing video games [professionally], I had already been in situations where I was under a lot of pressure. When we played the big finals, they were in stadiums with 20,000 people watching live. And most of the people watching were against me, because I was playing against Korean guys, and everyone in the audience was Korean.

That helped me a lot. And just living in Korea helped me a lot, because Korean society is very, very competitive. They’re crazy; they’ll just practice all day, all of the time. When I played video games with them, they’d play for 14 hours a day and never stop. It has never been a problem for me to focus mentally under pressure, and actually, I’d rather have a lot of pressure than nothing at all.

SPG: Most people know about your previous career as a professional video-game player. How does Starcraft, in particular, parallel poker?

BG: I think the set of skills required is very similar. In Starcraft, you also have incomplete information, because there is a map, and you each have a side of the map, but you have what is called the fog of war blocking out what your units can’t see on the map. So you can know only so much about what your opponent is doing, and with knowing only so much, you have to predict what he’s going to do, so you kind of have to adapt. And it’s the same thing in poker; when you plan a hand, you know only so much about his hand. You also have to predict what he’s going to do on future streets and be able to face that. Also, you have to be mentally strong to play Starcraft, and I think in any game that you have to be mentally strong.

SPG: You were talking about how both Starcraft and poker involve a lot of incomplete information. Another parallel that kind of struck me that relates to that is that — unlike chess, where there’s almost always a best move — there are thousands of decisions in poker that you have to make in every single game, and any one of them is, by necessity, kind of an imprecise decision; there’s usually not one standout perfect play. What thought process do you go through in every hand to make your decisions?

BG: I try to think about the flow of the game, and I try to get into the mind of my opponent as much as possible. I have a pretty good memory, so I try to remember all of the hands that he played in that kind of situation; when he was involved in a showdown, the kinds of hands he showed down in that kind of situation. So, starting preflop, I try to narrow his range of hands on every street that he plays. I also try to exploit the weaknesses of some players; as soon as a scare-card comes, it’s pretty easy to bluff them. If I know that some guy qualified for an event on PokerStars, he’s going to be much, much more eager to make the money and much more willing to make big laydowns on the bubble. If he’s a seasoned veteran pro, like Daniel Negreanu, he’s likely not going to care about making a big laydown on the bubble, because he wants to win.

SPG: Is there a mental checklist that you go through before you make any kind of decision?

BG: No, I don’t really go through any mental checklist. I’m always trying to be focused about the hand, and I’m always trying to think one step ahead during the hand. If I get check-raised on the flop and there’s a draw on the board, I’m always trying to think about the possible hand ranges that the guy has, when he has a draw and when he has a hand, and what I’m going to do if a specific card comes on the turn or river. Just having a plan for the hand is pretty important when you play, especially preflop. If I get check-raised and I know that the guy is a solid player, and I have a straight draw and there is a flush draw on the board, I can already have a plan if the possible flush comes; I can bet or raise the river because I don’t think my opponent can have a flush draw in that spot.

Sometimes, some very good players raise preflop, and some other guy goes all in, and the guy is pretty short-stacked, and the pros think for two minutes. I almost never take that much time preflop, because I always know the stacks of other people, so I already know that if that guy goes all in when I raise, I’m going to fold. Even if I don’t have it, I never Hollywood it, because I don’t like to Hollywood.

SPG: You were, notably, the first Supernova player on PokerStars, and then the first Supernova Elite. What kinds of games were you playing to get Supernova, and was it profitable to play so many tables at once for so long?

BG: I was playing more sit-and-gos when I got Supernova, because that’s what gets the most FPPs [Frequent Player Points] at a time. So, when I got Supernova Elite, I was doing something very stupid, so it wasn’t very profitable. I was trying to do that polyphasic sleep thing, where you sleep for 15 minutes every four hours. It’s not very scientific; I’d just read about it someplace, and read that da Vinci did it. So, I did that, and the first few days were fine, but by the end, I was going crazy and couldn’t take it anymore.

SPG: What were the buy-ins of the sit-and-gos you were playing, and how many were you playing at once?

BG: To get up to the first Supernova status, I was playing $50 to $200 nine-handed sit-and-gos, along with some $5-$10 and $10-$20 cash games, somewhere around 10 to 20 at a time. For Supernova Elite, I was playing $5,000 heads-up sit-and-gos, so I wasn’t playing too many at a time. I also played $500 and $1,000 nine-handed sit-and-gos at that time. But at the same time, I was doing that sleeping stuff, so it didn’t work out so well.

And at one point, I didn’t really care about how profitable it was, because I was traveling the tournament circuit, and there was another guy who wanted to become Supernova Elite before me, but he never traveled, he just stayed home and played all of the time, so it was easier for him. So, when I came back, I tried harder and played games when it definitely wasn’t profitable to do so, because I’d play anybody, even those better than I was, like Genius28 [Chris Lee] and others.

SPG: How does the way you play have to differ when you’re multitabling?

BG: It depends on how many tables I play and what type of tables I play. It’s easier to multitable tournament or turbo sit-and-gos, because those are so fast that they go quickly. But with cash games, it depends; if I play nine-handed cash games, my play doesn’t change that much. But sometimes when I play six-handed cash games, I’ll pass up smaller edges because I know that it would take me time to play the hand, and especially if it’s not profitable, I’d rather try to focus on playing the most profitable hands or picking the most profitable spots.

But I actually multitable less these days, because I play heads up a lot, and you can’t really multitable much when you play heads up, because you can’t pass up the small edges, since you have to play every hand, basically. And I think I can improve my game more when I don’t multitable; I can improve my metagame and my game overall, and can focus a bit more when I don’t multitable. I can play 14 tables at once, but obviously my game is not going to be the best. These days, I’m really trying to improve my game to be the best that I can be; I don’t care about playing profitably, I care about being the best.

SPG: How has your game evolved since you first started playing seriously?

BG: It evolved in every single way, that’s for sure. My table image is one thing; I’m more aware of my table image, and I’m much more aware of the image of other players, in general, and the flow of the game. When I first started playing seriously for a living, I wasn’t really aware of how other people at the table were thinking or how they played, and which kinds of hands they played. Now I’m trying to focus on every single aspect of the game. I’m trying to focus on how they play, what kind of mood they’re in, and whether they’re tilting a little bit. Trying to pick the best spots all of the time is most important. I’m just trying harder, overall.

SPG: What are some things about the life of a professional poker player that the general public may not know?

BG: It’s usually much tougher than the general public knows, because the general public sees poker shows and sees me win millions of dollars on TV, but that doesn’t happen right away. Sometimes you can play 20, 30, 50, or 100 tournaments without winning a single one. It’s also a lot of work to improve your game and stay in tune with what’s changing in the poker world, because there are trends in poker, so I always try to stay informed from the forums about how people like to play certain hands and how people are thinking, because it evolves a lot. It’s a much tougher life than people think.

SPG: You’re the most accomplished player in the PokerStars WCOOP, with four final tables and the most-ever cashes and tournaments played. What does it take to have so much success in that series?

BG: I love the WCOOP because the structure is more like that of live events. It’s deeper, and when it’s a deeper structure, you can have a bigger edge on the other players, I think. When everyone has only 20 big blinds, a lot of people already know general push-fold strategy. There aren’t too many big mistakes that people can make when they have 20 big blinds. If they shove at the wrong time, they’re usually a 30 percent dog at worst, so it’s not that bad. But when you’re playing in a really deep tournament, sometimes you can put all of your chips in when drawing completely dead.

I also like the WCOOP because the events last a long time. In the two-day event, you play for 12 hours on day one, and some people get tired and make more mistakes at the end of the 12 hours. It takes a lot of the same skills that you need for live poker, because the structure is very good, and you play more hands because it’s online.

SPG: What strategies seem most important to consistently do well in online tournaments?

BG: For deep-structured events, I think small-ball strategy is usually the best. It depends on the table, but the softer the table is, the better it is to play small-ball strategy, because if players are smart or good, they can adapt to small-ball strategy, and if they know that you are going to play small ball all of the time, they can put you out of your comfort zone by making bigger raises and reraises to make your hands unplayable. But overall, small-ball strategy is probably the best.

SPG: Who are the best players out there today? Whom do you hate playing against?

BG: I’ve never played against Phil Ivey, so I’d love to play against him. Daniel Negreanu is really great, as well; I can’t compete with his small-ball style, because it works really, really well when he uses it, and he has great hand-reading abilities. He’s probably the best player I’ve played with. Justin Bonomo is also a great player. It’s really hard; it’s unfair to give only a few names, because there are so many great player out there. David Pham is also a very tough opponent; he is always there, somehow. Vivek Rajkumar is also a really great player; I’ve played with him a few times. And also Amit Makhija. There are just too many great players, and I can’t name them all.

SPG: And what do you think makes them good? Is there a common trait?

BG: I think the common trait is that they are very able to adapt themselves. I think the most important trait in poker is to be able to adapt to the situation. If they have a standard strategy but there is something else going on, they’re able to adapt their play and change their style. Sometimes you have to completely change your style, even if you are a very aggressive player, if you know that some guy is going to be bluffing a lot. You can check-call your huge hands, because he’s going to bluff them for you.