1. Juha Helppi
2. Juha Helppi Poker
3. Juha Helppi Wsop

Phil Hellmuth has been known to get in a few testy verbal altercations at the poker table, and he has a few favorite barbs he likes to throw at opposing players.

365 Followers, 237 Following, 2 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Juha Helppi (@juhahelppi). Juha Helppi Is King of the Sea He Wins First Poker Tournament Held Underwater Juha Helppi must love the sea. It was near the sea in Aruba where the Finnish poker pro literally made Phil Gordon dump.

Upeshka De Silva is a Sri Lankan-American professional poker player from Katy, Texas.A three-time World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner, in 2020 he made the final table of the WSOP Main Event. Helppi used to be a high level paintball player and was the captain of the Finnish national paintball champions. Juha Helppi is a Finnish professional poker player from Helsinki, Finland. Before getting into poker, Juha was a high-level paintball player and his paintball team was the national champions of Finland 5 times - twice while Juha was the team captain.

'We'll see if you're around in 10 years,' is one of them, Hellmuth's way of suggesting a player may be experiencing success on a short-term wave of variance but won't have the sort of staying power Hellmuth himself has shown, putting up results over decades of play.

It's anyone's guess whether he ever threw that line at Juha Helppi when they battled back in the day — it doesn't seem likely given the Finnish pro's understated nature — but if he or anyone else questioned Helppi's long-term prospects in the game, Helppi has provided a resounding answer.

'My 1999 self wouldn't believe it. He'd say the guy in 2017 is crazy.'

Consistency is the calling card of Helppi, who has cashed in the six figures for 15 years running and continues to put up results nearly two decades after he first took up the game. He played in the €50,000 Super High Roller here at PokerStars Championship Prague, a long way from his first live result, third place for $5,316 in the Helsinki Freezeout in 2001.

In that way, Helppi sticks out like a sore thumb in a field like this. Even some of the players who have seemed to be at this game for years, like Stephen Chidwick (2008) and Timothy Adams (2007), began their live tournament success well after Helppi. Only legends Erik Seidel (1988) and John Juanda (1997) can reminisce about tournaments past in which Helppi had no part.

But while those two enjoy poker celebrity status, Helppi has stayed largely under the radar despite such a long track record of success.

What would 1999 Helppi have said if he was told he'd be playing €50,000 tournaments in 18 years?

'I thought people who pay $10,000 to play a tournament are crazy and totally nuts,' he said. 'My 1999 self wouldn't believe it. He'd say the guy in 2017 is crazy. Back then, there wasn't even 50K tournaments.'

The journey has been a long but rewarding one for Helppi.

'I started with $200 online and... it's been going well,' he said, an understatement if there's ever been one. 'I never busted that $200.'

The Consistency of Juha Helppi

_{Data courtesy of The Hendon Mob}

Helppi failed to cash in the €50K here though and didn't care to fire another shell, noting that the field was 'very tough.' The lack of result continued what's been a tough year for the longtime pro.

Nowadays, with the tangled web of backing deals and swaps that permeates every level of tournament poker but particularly high rollers, it's almost impossible to discern who is winning and how much they're ahead. Helppi provided rare insight into the bottom line numbers for a top pro, though, admitting his $157,459 in cashes leaves him in the red for the year.

'This is the first year it looks like I'm going to end up having a losing year,' he said. 'Of course, it's disappointing. I've been getting a lot of bad beats in key situations in tournaments.

'You only get to play 40 to 50 live tournaments a year. It's very easy to end up losing. I'm winning in cash games, but playing the high rollers and not cashing anything big, I'm of course losing a bit.'

The high rollers overall have been good to Helppi, though. The past two years have been two of his best three in terms of total money won —

'This is the first year it looks like I'm going to end up having a losing year.'

along with 2011 — and high rollers have played a big role in that. Just last year in this very event, he took third for €341,150. He also had big scores in EPT 12 Malta €25,750 High Roller (second for €344,440) and 2015 World Series of Poker $25,000 Pot-Limit Omaha High Roller (fifth for $247,754).

Helppi now prefers the big buy-in, small field variety of tournament. He noted that as his results have picked up in such events, he has found it harder to focus on small buy-in, large field events like the €2,200 PokerStars National Championship High Roller in which he was on break when he spoke to PokerNews. That has led to flagging results in such tournaments, despite a far higher quality of competition in the high rollers.

'I know all the high stakes players pretty well, how they play,' he said. 'So, I try to adjust accordingly. A €2k tournament, I'm not really motivated. I'm trying to gamble it up or bust out so I can make it into the €25K.'

Given his preference for the high roller events, Helppi voiced a bit of concern about the near future of the high roller economy after seeing numbers in the Prague €50K dip from 49 last year to 34 for 2017.

'I think they should start thinking about something, how they can make it bigger again,' Helppi said. 'It looks like it might dry out. The fields are quite tough and the rake is quite high.'

Overlap with Bellagio's WPT Five Diamond likely contributed to the shorter turnout, as that series boasted a number of high roller events including a $100K. Some of the players participating in the Prague €50K bought in mid-tournament right after flying in. That's certainly far from ideal and likely to turn some players off, although Koray Aldemir didn't let it slow him down en route to bagging the Day 1 chip lead.

Regardless of how the international tournament scene unfolds going in the coming years, Helppi is as safe a bet as anyone to keep showing up wherever there's a worthwhile tournament and keep putting up results in said events.

He plans to continue to add to his $7 million-plus in winnings, and if he does, he hopes to keep his narrow lead in an under-the-radar money race: the heads-up battle with Patrik Antonius for most cashes by anyone from Finland. Helppi's currently up about $200,000. The Scandinavian country has produced its share of top players over the years, but those two sit head and shoulders above their countrymen with leads of $4 million on third-place Jani Sointula.

Helppi admitted he used to do some scoreboard watching to check on Antonius' progress, but Antonius' recession from the tournament scene and decision to focus on high-stakes cash games has left Helppi sweating only the odd $100K that lures Antonius back.

'It's nice to be No. 1 at the moment, but if he gets there, it's fine,' Helppi said. 'I'm just trying to win some money and have fun.'

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  Juha Helppi

Juha Helppi must love the sea. It was near the sea in Aruba where the Finnish poker pro literally made Phil Gordon dump a glass of water over his head in frustration as Helppi bullied his way for the win at the Aruba Poker Classic in 2002.

To gather in his latest win, Helppi's the one who had to get a little wet. In fact, he had to swim through 30 feet of water to the bottom of the Caribbean Sea for it, because that's where InterPoker.com decided to hold its first 'Extreme Poker' event.

Helppi joined poker pros Phil 'The Unabomber' Laak and Kenna James, InterPoker.com's spokesman Peter Marcus, and an amateur online qualifier in the world's first underwater poker tournament.

Helppi, who along with Kathy Liebert, Robert Varkonyi, and Pete Giordano, make up InterPoker.com's poker team, didn't hesitate to say yes when asked if he would play in the undersea event.

'I always wanted to do diving. It was a good chance to do it and play poker at the same time,' Helppi says. 'It was a great experience.'

It took three months and plenty of hours in a swimming pool to plan the event, which took place off the coast of St. Kitts in the Caribbean. The first time they got into a swimming pool for a test game, the cardtable floated away and all the card turned into a soggy mess, Marcus says. So a poker table had to be reinforced and weighted with 70 pounds to keep it from drifting off in the currents and the cards were laminated with plastic.

The players and dealer used Plexiglas to hold the cards in place. For chips, they simply bought the heaviest chips they could find, and everything worked.

Liebert and Varkonyi watched the tournament from the surface, while tropical fish and one stingray took ringside seats.

'The stingray seemed very interested in the whole thing, really,' Marcus says.

Varkonyi was suppose to be underwater with them, but a bad cold kept him on the surface, peering down into the deep to catch the action.

Helppi said he never played in a poker room more beautiful than the one at the bottom of the sea. If he wasn't in the hand, he said he found himself gawking at the underwater world of the coral reef that was nearby.

'Of course poker's fun, but it was great fun to be underwater,' Helppi says.

Unlike tournaments where a breathing apparatus isn't required, there were three ways to get knocked out of the tourney. Only running out of chips had anything to do with poker, since players would be disqualified if they floated away or surfaced.

The players had to train in a swimming pool before they took their seats under all that water. For safety, three dive masters were present at the game in case an emergency occurred.

The players all had 40 minutes of air, so the action was fast and furious from the start, Marcus says. Since people can't talk underwater, the players were given flash cards with phrases written on them. There was 'you suck,' 'bad beat,' 'nice hand,' go fish,' 'shame,' and 'me shark, you guppy.'

'There was a number of fish and shark comments going through there,' Marcus says.

Each of the players wore a meter telling them just how much air their tanks held. Helppi kept glancing at his meter when he first plopped into the water, but as the tournament went on, and as Helppi became accustomed to the environment, it became a less of a concern.

Until it got under five minutes. That's when Helppi had to go all in with 8 6 head-to-head against Marcus, who quickly (as quickly as you can move underwater) called with K-J offsuit. It was over when Helppi found a six on the flop and an eight on the turn.

'Of course it's a bit slower because you can't move that fast,' Helppi says. 'But we had no problems.'

For his efforts, Helppi was given a poker bracelet made from beads and shells from the Caribbean.

This event is the first that InterPoker.com plans on sponsoring. They're now kicking around ideas where to hold the next event, such as floating on the Dead Sea or playing while white water rafting.

Juha Helppi

Helppi would love to defend his Extreme Poker title, as long as it's on the ground or under the sea.

Juha Helppi Poker

'If they come up with good ideas, I'd be willing to participate,' he says. 'I'm a bit scared of heights, though.'

InterPoker.com is soliciting suggestions where the next Extreme Poker event should take place. People can email ryan@interpoker.com with suggestions.

Juha Helppi Wsop