WPT Festa al Lago, Bellagio, Las Vegas, $15,000 No Limit Hold'em, October 20th - 26th 2008

Entrants: 368
Buyin: $15,000 + $400
Prizepool: $5,354,400

1. Bertrand 'ElkY' Grospellier, $1,411,015
2. Nam Le, $943,215
3. Odie Dardon, $506,245
4. Nenad Medic, $373,010
5. Adam Levy, $266,445
6. William Mietz, $186,510

Frenchman Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier added a WPT title to his already glowing resume with a victory in the Festa al Lago tournament from the famous Bellagio casino in Las Vegas. The PokerStars Team Pro now joins an elite group of only three players (alongside Gavin Griffin and Englishman Roland de Wolfe) to have won both EPT and WPT titles.

The final stages of the tournament were stacked with big names as Erica Schoenberg, Isaac Baron, Justin Bonomo, Andrew Robl and Joe Sebok all fell just short of the televised six-handed final table. Once the final began, Grospellier took charge, eliminating all five of his opponents single-handedly on his way to victory. The first to fall was satllite winner William Mietz whose K-10 failed to improve against ElkY’s Ace-high on a low flop.

Adam ‘Roothlus’ Levy has long been a very respected and feared online tournament player but he too couldn’t escape the hot streak of the Frenchman. With sky-high blinds compared to the chipstacks, everybody on the table was relatively shortstacked, even the chipleader. Thus, Levy saw his A-9 as good enough to push with, only to run into two black queens of Grospellier. They held up to send ‘Roothlus’ to the rail in 5th for $266,445.

This left ElkY with over 10,000,000 chips – more than half the total in play. This huge cushion allowed him to call the dangerous Nenad Medic’s push with K-J. Medic was slightly ahead holding pocket sixes until a jack on the flop saw another one bite the dust.

As if to confirm it was truuly meant to be his day, Grospellier got caught red-handed trying to steal the blinds when shoving on Oddie Dardon’s big blind with just 10-2. Dardon quickly made the call with A-J as a huge pot was forming. Predictably, the poker gods intervened however as a deuce on the board all but sealed the tournament with ElKy going into heads-up with a 15:1 chip advantage over serial WPT casher Nam Le. Though he put up a spirited fight, it was never to be for Le – the two of them eventually going to the races with Le’s A-Q up against the pocket tens of ElkY. A ten on the flop sealed it as Grospellier took down over $1.4m and fully established himself as one of the world’s very best, no matter whether it’s on the virtual felt or live and in person.