One of Airdrie’s top poker players recently walked away with a provincial title.
Dale Aspholm won the big prize at the Big Slick Regional Poker Tour Finals at the Ogden Legion in Calgary on June 27, beating fellow Airdronian Al Jones at the final table.
More than 100 of the province’s top amateur players gathered for the two-day no limit hold ‘em tournament. To most of the spectators’ surprise it ended up being the two Airdrie foes battling it out.
“It was kind of a good thing in a way I guess,” Aspholm laughed. “I had the big stack going into the final table, I think Al had the middle stack, and I played decent to win a few hands. Then at the end,, I had him out chipped, so he was always at a disadvantage and I played pretty aggressively against him.”
On the final hand, Jones bet pre-flop and Aspholm called with a suited nine-five.
“He was big blind and had to go all in, so I called him with a nine-five, and he a had seven-three. Some premium hands there,” Aspholm joked.
A pair of fives then greeted him on the flop, all but securing the victory.
“Until the last card is there you can’t do anything and you don’t want to jinx yourself,” he said.
“When you watch on TV, it seems like the person with the big stack never wins, so I went in there with that attitude. But I just played premium hands for awhile and didn’t take too many chances at first.”
With the win, Aspholm earns a seat to a professional team tournament at the River Cree Casino in Edmonton on the Labour Day long weekend, where he will face teams of poker professionals for an overall prize pool of $100,000.
