French Phenomenon Thomas Santerne Conquers GGMillion$ Twice in Succession
Frenchman Thomas Santerne continues to surprise everyone. After an extremely successful December in 2023, where Santerne recorded a lot of top results, he continued to dominate tournament poker. This time he won the GGMillion$ online tournament at GGPoker for the second time in a row.
Thomas started the final table with the third stack and played the first hour of the game calmly, with the lowest VPIP at the table. At the start of the second hour, he doubled up, catching a full house and becoming the chip leader at the table. Austrian Roman Grabek played against him in heads-up. The head-to-head game lasted for half an hour, after which Santerne celebrated another victory and won $237,700 in prize money.
This is the second win in a row for the 23-year-old player, who made his first deposit of €50 at the age of 18. At that time, he lived with his parents and worked in a decor store near the house. Then Santerne began to stream tournaments from €2 to €10.
At the same time, according to the player himself, he had serious problems with bankroll management from the very beginning of his career:
"With a bankroll of €825, I would easily sit down to play an €800 tournament, lose it, and then play €20 and €5 tournaments. That all changed when a friend showed me a variance modeling site. After that I made a deposit of €200 and started playing tournaments for €2. I earned €10,000 in six months of playing."
In parallel with poker, Santerne worked for another two years in a decor store and also took some random part-time jobs. Then he devoted six months to work at a factory for the production of metal structures, after which he went fully into poker.
Julianna Svyrydenko
