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Over the weekend, “ElkY”, also known as Bertrand Grospellier, won his first Hearthstone tournament.  ElkY started his career as a professional StarCraft player and even became famous in South Korea, in mid-November the player signed for esports outfit Team Liquid, a Dutch-based company.

Since ElkY left the world of esports and professional video gaming to pursue a career as a poker player and greater prize pools, the esports and gaming industry grew exponentially.

With a new generation of gamers, esports have become so popular that it is been used in the poker industry as a model to reinvigorate poker’s popularity, both live poker and online poker.

In recent years, esports have been looked at for inspiration by key figures such as Alex Dreyfus. One example of that is the final table “Cube” concept presented by Global Poker League. This concept is heavily inspired by the way esports present video gaming as a spectator sport.

ElkY’s Late Run

Recently Full Tilt has become the sponsor of the G2 Esports Hearthstone team.  However, last Sunday at the Insomnia Truesilver Championship 2, it was PokerStars pro who triumphed at the Redemption Cub. At least the triumph stayed in the Rational Group.

Grospellier arrived one hour late and he had not a great start due to difficulties adapting to the UK time zone. Fortunately, he did not have a problem playing the rest of the tournament.

ElkY managed to make to the final and beat his final opponent. According to commentators ElkY exhibited flawless “Warlozk Zoo play”.

Congratulations to ElkY!

What is Hearthstone?

According to Dreyfus, games like Hearthstone are a huge threat to poker. Recently Dreyfus said poker has to reinvent itself to avoid losing market space.

Hearthstone is set in the World of Warcraft universe and is a digital turn-based card game. To play this game you need skill and chance, players can equip weapons, cast spells and summon “minions” to battle.

Until now, the game has more than 40 million registered users, this is more than half of PokerStars’ entire user base.

 

 

 

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