If Antonin Teisseire were a bottle of red wine, he’d be a Grand Cru -- vintage 1966.
Teisseire, a full-bodied 45-year-old professional poker player from Tassin-la-Demi-Lune, France won the most recent World Series of Poker competition, held at the Rio in Las Vegas.
Teisseire busted out 816 other poker players who entered the $5,000 buy-in Triple-Chance No-Limit Hold’em championship. It was the 50th of 58 gold bracelet events on this year's WSOP schedule. First place paid a whopping $825,604 in prize money. But the real prize that mattered most to Teissere was a ten-inch cylinder of gold representing ultimate supremacy in the poker world.
Teisseire was born in a town which is located in the heart of France’s famous Rhone Valley. He now resides in Cote d’Azur. It’s a robust region best-known for cultivating powerful cabernets and zinfandels.
Indeed, when it comes to the finest things in life, Teisseire is a fruit bomb. Within him are loads of cherries, rasberry, dark fruit and jam flavors. There’s a twist of oak. This grape resembles of black tea, spices, roses, anise and a hint of tar. But things were not always this way. The wine took time to mature. Alas, the young Teisseire was fiercely tannic and bitter. But with age, he became extraordinarily powerful with flavors of apple, cherry and smoke that were supremely gratifying to the palate. Attempts to cultivate and grow this grape outside of the tiny region of Southern France have all failed.
“If eating, drinking and partying were a sport, I’d be the Phil Ivey of the game,” Teisseire barked out via a interpreter, just moments after jumping into a crowd of supporters celebrating his victory. “I love to eat! I love to drink! I love to live life!”
The three-day long tournament stretched into an unscheduled fourth day, due to some extraordinary play during the latter stages of the competition. In the end, it was Teisseire who de-cantered everyone’s WSOP dreams. Among the players who made it through the main course in this event were some of poker’s very best – including Eric Froehlich (4th), Ryan Young (21st), Barry Greenstein (27th), Vitaly Lunkin (28th), David Bakes Baker (32nd), Sam Stein (53rd), Ken Aldridge (60th), Pete Vilandos (63rd), Allen Bari (64th), Josh Arieh (69th) and Daniel Idema (70th).
No doubt, if Wine Spectator were rating all the players who cashed in this event, there would be a lot of 96s and 97s, and a even few 98s and 99s.
But there would be only one perfect score of 100, which belongs to Antonin Teisseire.
Please return to WSOP.com soon for the complete official report.