Team PokerStars Pro member Betrand “Elky” Grospellier leads the field entering the final table at the World Poker Tour’s Festa al Lago tournament. The six-handed televised table kicks off this afternoon at 4:00pm Pacific Time from the Bellagio in Las Vegas. WPT hosts Mike Sexton and Vince Van Patten will call the action when play resumes.
Grospellier won a sizeable hand with A-9 against Joe Sebok’s K-9, sending Sebok to the rails. Grospellier told WPT Live Updates Hostess Amanda Leatherman after play had concluded, “I feel pretty good. I lost some pots and couldn’t really get anything going. I couldn’t get any hands and was just waiting for a good spot. I’m very happy to have finished so well.” His 2008 win in the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure was worth $2 million, his first European Poker Tour title. He finished fifth in the most recent Grand Prix de Paris for over $100,000 and placed 370th in the World Series of Poker Main Event in July. He has over 6.4 million chips at the Bellagio.
Right behind Grospellier is another familiar face for fans of poker: Full Tilt Poker pro Nenad Medic. He won his first WSOP bracelet in 2008, but has just half of the chip stack of Grospellier with 3 million. Medic told Leatherman, “It was a yo-yo today. I was up and down like crazy. These blinds are ridiculous, so you have to gamble.” On his game plan for the final table, he stated, “There are a couple of short stacks. I’ll see how it goes. I’m just going to play my game and see what happens. Whoever picks up the most hands is going to take it down.” Medic finished third in the World Poker Finals last year for nearly $500,000.
Third in chips is Nam Le, who enters the final table with a stack of 2.3 million. David “Chino” Rheem, a member of the WSOP November Nine, told Leatherman that Le provides an excellent role model for him. Le told the WPT, “I try to come to the table without an ego. I value my chips. Today, it turned into an all-in fest. It wasn’t really poker. Instead of trying to steal blinds, I tried to double up.” Le is entering his fifth WPT final table, a truly amazing feat for the man who won the Bay 101 Shooting Star tournament during Season IV for $1.1 million.
Here are the chip counts and seat assignments entering the final table on Sunday:
Seat 1: Will Mietz – 1,400,000
Seat 2: Osmin “Odie” Dardon – 2,070,000
Seat 3: Bertrand “Elky” Grospellier – 6,420,000
Seat 4: Nam Le – 2,275,000
Seat 5: Adam “Roothlus” Levy – 1,370,000
Seat 6: Nenad Medic – 3,025,000
Levy just signed with Ultimate Bet to be the site’s newest member of the site’s Star Players Team, which also includes Cliff “JohnnyBax” Josephy, James “P0KERPR033” Campbell, Best Damn Poker Show Season 1 winner Tracy Scala, actress Tiffany Michelle, and blackjack bad boy “Hollywood” Dave Stann. Levy plays online as “Roothlus” and was famously just berated by Ultimate Bet face Phil Hellmuth during the 2008 WSOP Main Event at the featured table. Little did Hellmuth know that Levy would be joining the site just a few months later.
The WPT’s Festa al Lago tournament will air as part of the seventh season of its tournament series on Fox Sports Net. An air date has not yet been announced.
