Parmar Takes Main Title at The Grande Poker Series

The first edition of the Grande Poker Series at Ace Casino Airport has run its course with a solid turnout. Edmonton’s Taran Parmar ran away with the Main Event title after bagging a huge lead on Day 1b (thanks, at least in large part, to the author’s donation late in the day).

That capped a successful series that saw nearly 1,300 entries for prizes of ~$450k. While that may feel small in comparison to other local series, the Ace Grande is designed as a smaller, cozy series. With a smaller space for poker than other local rooms, what Ace lacks in quantity it makes up in quality with the best poker chairs in the province and the best value-for-money food deals in the city.

Four games over the course of the series gave away more than $10k to the winner. As expected, three of those games were multi-day events, with the Main Event topping the list at more than $36k for first place. The outlier among the single-day games was the opening Monthly Challenge, which saw 140 entries for total prizes of more than $40k and $10,650 to the winner, Jamal Borhat.

A Grande Final Week

Along with Parmar’s Main Event win, which he was able to celebrate with Nu Teliani, who won Event #5, and Bash Ramahi, who was part of the 3rd place Team in Event #10 (along with Brittany Rushton who notched her first-ever poker cash) as well as the 2024 API winner and 2025 leader Michael Malm, there were a few other interesting results through the end of the week.

As mentioned, Edmonton optometrist Nu Teliani took down the PLO PKO game while local rising star Kim Pham bagged up the two-card version. Greg Genge once again demonstrated his 4-card skills with a win in the PLO/PLO8 mix event while Graham Lupton pushed through a field of 106 to take down the Mid Grande.

In the smaller events, Gianna Taylor & Noah Capannelli took down the team event over Melissa Sekulich & Kevin Baraluk in a hard-fought final battle, while Maru (Maria) Somers broke a long-standing drought with a win late Saturday night in the final 20/20 event of the series.

My Grande Flop

Once again, I took to the Trans Canada Highway to head into Calgary for a few games in this series. Not only is it a series I generally have free time for, but Ace Casinos and Airport Poker Manager Jonathan Kunaman always step up to treat me and the rest of the players as well as possible. Before I get into my fairly appalling results from the series, I just want to give a shoutout to Kunaman and the casino management for covering some of my hotel costs as well as comp’ing me a Main Event ticket.

I initially went to Calgary on the opening weekend of the series to play the Seniors event and Day 1b of the Mini Grande. I busted the Seniors very shortly after late entries closed and jumped into a satellite game. I went reasonably deep in that one, coming within a few spots of the final table, but ultimately struck out on that at-bat as well.

The next day it was time for the final flight of the Mini Grande, but truthfully, I should have just stayed home. It may have been my most appalling day of poker in recent memory with the highlight being a hand where I gifted my second of three bullets because I was ordering food and not paying attention to the on-table action.

I raised the pre-flop with big slick in spades. I then turned my attention to the waitress to deal with my food order before turning back to see a big bet in front of the big blind. Without thinking, I assumed it was still pre-flop and I’d been three-bet, so I immediately put the rest of my chips in with A♠K♠.

It was only after my chips were in the pot that I saw the flop on the board already. A late position player and the big blind had called while I was paying for my food, and the BB led out on the flop. I’d shoved overtop with exactly zero equity on the board. The late position caller reshoved over me, sending the big blind into the blender for a long tank-fold.

I immediately apologized to the BB and the table for completely losing the plot on the hand. I was drawing dead to the in-position player and was quickly off to the cage for my 3rd bullet. While that one didn’t end quite as spectacularly, it still ended in ashes before the bags.

I took a few days break to lick my wounds with plans to return for final weekend festivities with the team event and Day 1b of the Main. The Team event on Friday night was loads of fun as always, with the emphasis very much on drinking and very much off poker. I played with the eventual winner of the final 20/20 game the following night, Maru Somers, and we made the final table, busting a few spots off the four paid spots.

With far less of a hangover than I expected, Saturday was Main Event day with the added bonus of a freeroll thanks to Ace Casinos. Overall, I’m fairly happy with my play in the game and I managed to run the freeroll stack up to just shy of the end-of-day bags.

The pivotal hand for me, and for the eventual winner of the game Taran Parmar, came late in the evening and saw me raise late position with ace-queen suited and Parmar defend his big blind. He check-called my C-bet on a queen-high flop with two hearts and I smooth-called to the turn, which brought some backdoor straight draws around to the front.

Parmar check-raised the turn after I continued again, betting relatively small to get value from what I was thinking was a mid-pair or a drawing hand. His raise was also relatively small, and I elected to flat to the river with the expectation of more value for my top pair should the draws brick.

As expected, the third heart hit the river. Parmar checked again, and I decided to fire regardless of the heart draw coming in. Parmar, who knows how to play cards, check-shoved a covering stack on me. We were on the final two tables at that point with ten bags expected and Parmar and I both holding top-three stacks in the room to start the hand.

I hit the tank hard and took ~5 minutes to finally make my decision, folding the queen face-up. My idea, going into the river, was calling his bets for value, but when it became a call for my life, I frankly chickened out. He didn’t have the hearts, and instead found an excellent bluff spot with a busted straight draw.

My fold left me with chips, though about a third of my previous stack, and that was part of my in-the-moment reasoning for the hand. My friend and award-winning poker podcaster/writer Dara O’Kearney has expressed the sentiment that the wrong fold is always less damaging than the wrong call and that was part of the reasoning I went with to leave myself with some chips behind to perhaps find a better spot.

Nonetheless, in this case, it didn’t work out for me as I lost my fumes to bust just four away from a seat in Day 2 and a spot in the money. Parmar came away from the hand with a chip lead that he rode to the win, but had I found the call in that spot, it would have been me carrying the chip lead out of that hand, at least, with Parmar in even worse shape than I ended up in.

But that’s the game we play — we make our decisions in the moment and have to live with the results. I’m not unhappy with the decision in the end — you can’t be results-oriented in poker, and it was a good bluff spot for him. That said, there are a few spots I’ve identified in the hand where I might have played it differently to change the outcome (thanks to Ali Razzaq for some post-game analysis) but I think I’ll save that for a future article perhaps.

Thanks again to Ace and the poker staff up at the Airport for a fun series and congratulations to Parmar and all the winners from the opening Grande Poker Series of 2025.