Bertrand 'ElkY' Grospellier Finds Fold With Jacks on Ten-High Board
Long time pro Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier has been enjoying a tournament resurgence of late.
Grospellier made deep runs in each of the last two PokerStars Championship Main Events, giving him his biggest tournament scores in more than three years.
At the PokerStars Championship presented by Monte-Carlo Casino® in April, Grospellier finished 12th out of 727 in the Main Event, then in late May followed that run with a 13th-place finish out of 387 in the PokerStars Championship Sochi Main Event. Those finishes pushed his overall tournament earnings over the $11 million mark.
As happens for anyone enjoying tournament success, good cards and good choices helped Grospellier in those two events. In Sochi Grospellier recounted one hand in particular for us involving a tough decision for him — having to lay down pocket jacks on the river despite the board being ten-high.
As ElkY explains below, with around 25 players left , the blinds were 4,000/8,000 when a short stack open-raised all in for less than five big blinds. It folded to the small blind who made a minimum-reraise, and after thinking about what to do with his JxJx Grospellier elected to call the reraise.
What followed were three postflop streets in which ElkY's jacks remained higher than any of the board cards. But with each street he found himself feeling less and less confident his jacks were good.
The flop came 10x4x5x, prompting a small bet from Grospellier's opponent which he called. After the 3x turn another small bet came, and ElkY called once more.
The river was the 9x, and this time Grospellier's opponent pushed all in. Eventually ElkY found a fold, but listen to what he says about his thought process from street-to-street, as well as how the third player who was already all in affected the hand by reducing the likelihood of the small blind bluffing.
Grospellier's good run has continued into the 2017 World Series of Poker, where he returns to a huge chip lead to start today's final table of Event #6: High Roller for One Drop - $111,111 No-Limit Hold'em.
Nine players remain from the 130-entry field, with Grospellier's stack of 16.8 million-plus almost than twice that of his nearest challenger.
Stick with PokerNews for hand-for-hand updates from today's High Roller for One Drop final table to see if Grospellier can continue to make good bets, raises, calls and folds in his quest for the $3,686,865 first prize and a second career WSOP bracelet.
