Being a monarch just ain’t as exclusive a club as it used to be. Less than two weeks after Jake Cody became just the third person in history to earn a WSOP bracelet in addtion to holding EPT and WPT titles, Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier has expanded the triple crown royal family to four members. Grospellier may be the newest triple crown member, but he can also claim the Guinness World Record for multi-tabling when he juggled 62 tables at last summer’s EPT Monaco. That last bit makes us curious as to whether Jake Cody has any Guinness aspirations, such as growing the longest nostril hairs or something… This could get interesting.
Grospellier earned the royal nod by taking Event #21, the $10k Seven-Card Stud Championship, an especially impressive feat considering that, up until Sunday, Grospellier had never played stud poker. Given his inexperience, Grospellier admitted he made a lot of mistakes on Day 1, and even acted out of turn on the final day due to his unfamiliarity with the rules. Nevertheless, Grospellier survived a 126-strong field and a four-hour heads-up battle with Steven Landfish to earn the bracelet and over $331k. (We were so inspired by Grospellier’s successful leap into the great unknown that we’ve decided to open our very own open-heart surgery clinic in our spare bathroom. We’re not doctors, but we do have a large selection of sharp metal instruments, and really, how hard could this be?)
Jason Somerville has taken Event #20, the $1k NLHE. The event was the largest single-day entry event in WSOP history, with 3,175 players taking their seats, but Somerville, who has previously placed second, third, fourth and fifth at WSOP events, was a man on a mission. Fittingly, it took just a single hand of heads-up play against Yashar Darian to seal the deal and earn Somerville $493K, the largest cash of his career. Somerville and Grospellier’s victories mean that 20 out of 21 WSOP bracelets have now been won by first-timers.
Finally, lest anyone forget, there is poker happening outside of Vegas this week. For instance, the next leg of PokerStars’ UK & Ireland Poker Tour gets underway at Aspers Casino in Newcastle on Thursday.
