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Torstein Horgmo tries his hand at the World Series of Poker in Vegas…

We all know that Torstein Horgmo absolutely slays on a snowboard but who’d have guessed he had a mean poker face too? The Norwegian slopestyle boss took a seat on Day 1b of the $10,000 buy-in World Series of Poker Main Event and made it through to the second day of play, growing his stack of chips from an initial 30,000 to 47,250 in the process.

Although Torstein plays poker in his free time he’d never entered an official tournament until Monday: “It’s a new feeling for me. Snowboarding can be tense but this is a different type of excitement. I like it.”

Torstein was approached by PokerStars and couldn’t turn down a trip to Vegas and the chance to bag a whopping $8.3 million: “I got hit up by PokerStars Scandinavia and they asked me if I was interested in playing.”

“I’m starting to follow it more and more though. Poker players are pretty cool guys to hang out with, they’re not that different than snowboarders.”

With an X Games big air gold medal and a first place finish at the Burton European Open, Horgmo has had a pretty successful season and we don’t blame him for mixing it up with a spot of gambling…

Who, knows, once he’s done pushing the boundaries of freestyle snowboarding he might eventually go the way of Ingemar Backman – the Swedish pro snowboarder and Olympian turned professional poker player, although as far as we can tell from the WSOP website, Mr Horgmo didn’t make it through to day 3 after the field was dramatically cut.

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