ElkY joins Team Liquid as a Hearthstone pro
The Team PokerStars Pro joins the eSports organisation as a professional Hearthstone player.
In a move that further bridges the gap between poker and video games, Bertrand Grospellier is now sponsored by both PokerStars and an eSports organisation.
He will represent Team Liquid playing Hearthstone, the popular online collectible card game which many poker players also enjoy, including Daniel Negreanu.
This is a return to his competitive gaming roots for ElkY, who was one of the most successful StarCraft players ever, before turning to poker and winning the Triple Crown and over $10 million in live earnings.
Speaking of his new appointment, ElkY stated:
As it was a dream come true for me to join PokerStars Team Pro, today another of my dreams becomes reality as I become a Team Liquid player. When I discovered poker, I had to make the difficult choice to leave the competitive gaming world to focus my energy fully on poker. Hearthstone is one of the first games that shares the same skills as poker, and I am very excited for what the future holds in my multi-gaming career.
The marriage of gaming and poker
This is not the first dual partnership related to poker and gaming, however, as earlier this year Jason Somerville became both a PokerStars Pro and an official Twitch partner. Clearly PokerStars see a marriage of poker and eSports as the way forward for the game, as Lee Jones, Director of Poker Communications at PokerStars, suggests:
There are many similarities between poker and gaming, and ElkY’s unrivalled success in both fields is a testament to his unwavering thirst for skill and strategy games. As the boundary between poker players and strategy gamers continues to blur, it is trailblazers such as ElkY who are narrowing the gap between people who consider themselves gamers, and those who consider themselves poker players. We look forward to the new era of strategy gaming that ElkY’s appointment represents.
If you are unfamiliar with Hearthstone, check out this video of Daniel Negreanu and ElkY playing each other:
Do you play Hearthstone? How similar is it to poker? Let us know in the comments.
