Saskatchewan farmer wins $100K in poker tournament

Apr 14, 2016

Plans to put the money back into the farm

By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content
Farms.com

What does a farmer from Kerrobert, Saskatchewan do with a $100,000 poker win?

“I’ll be able to pay some bills,” said Mitchell Heidt soon after winning a Deep Stacks Poker Tour event in Edmonton on Monday. “We’re getting ready to seed right away so it’ll probably go straight to a bill, I imagine."

Heidt was able to outlast 510 other players for the top prize but said he didn’t feel any nerves being at the final table.

“I wasn’t really intimidated at all,” he said, adding that he knew some of the competitors.

Here’s how the final hand went down:

After Heidt raised $600,000 in chips, his opponent Laurence Louie flipped a coin. If it landed on heads, he would push all his chips into the pot; tails makes him fold.

The coin landed on heads and Louie put his remaining $2,100,000 in chips into the pot.

Heidt calls showing an ace of clubs and nine of diamonds; Louie is holding the queen and jack of hearts.

The dealer flips over a 10 of clubs, a three of spades and six of diamonds. The next card is a six of diamonds, meaning Louie needs the next card to be a queen or jack to win.

The river card is a four of spades, giving Heidt the victory with an ace high.

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.