}
Juha Helppi (born 4 March 1977) is a
Finnish professional
poker
Poker is a family of Card game#Comparing games, comparing card games in which Card player, players betting (poker), wager over which poker hand, hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, with varying rules i ...
player from
Helsinki
Helsinki () is the Capital city, capital and most populous List of cities and towns in Finland, city in Finland. It is on the shore of the Gulf of Finland and is the seat of southern Finland's Uusimaa region. About people live in the municipali ...
.
Career
Juha was originally a
croupier
A croupier or dealer is someone appointed at a gambling table to assist in the conduct of the game, especially in the distribution of bets and payouts. Croupiers are typically employed by casinos.
Origin of the word
Originally a "croupier" mean ...
. He worked as a dealer for
RAY in Finland but never dealt poker. He made a name for himself in the first
World Poker Tour
The World Poker Tour (WPT) is an internationally televised gaming and entertainment brand. Since 2002, the World Poker Tour has operated a series of international poker tournaments and associated television series broadcasting playdown and the ...
(WPT) event in
Aruba
Aruba, officially the Country of Aruba, is a constituent island country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, in the southern Caribbean Sea north of the Venezuelan peninsula of Paraguaná Peninsula, Paraguaná and northwest of Curaçao. In 19 ...
, where he eliminated
Kathy Liebert
Kathleen H. Liebert (born October 1, 1967, in Tennessee) is an American professional poker player.
Poker
Liebert started her professional poker career as a prop player in Colorado. She would later go on to enter tournaments and she won the f ...
on the way to defeating professional player
Phil Gordon in a heads-up challenge match. He has since made two other WPT final tables, with a 4th-place finish in the Season 1 Battle of Champions and a 2nd-place finish to England's
Roland De Wolfe
Roland De Wolfe (born November 30, 1984) is an English professional poker player and a former writer for the poker magazine ''Inside Edge''.
After winning first prize in an event at the 2004 Gutshot Poker Festival, De Wolfe went on to cash in ...
in the Grand Prix de Paris 2005 event.
At the
2019 World Series of Poker, he won his first
World Series of Poker
The World Series of Poker (WSOP) is a series of poker tournaments held annually in Paradise, Nevada, and since 2004, sponsored by Eldorado Resorts, Caesars Entertainment. It dates its origins to 1970, when Benny Binion invited seven of the best ...
bracelet in the $10,000 Limit Hold'em Championship. He won his second WSOP bracelet in the
2020 WSOP Online. In total, he has finished in the money in 29 WSOP events.
In November 2005, Helppi faced
Phil Laak
Philip Courtney Laak (born September 8, 1972) is an Irish-American professional poker player and a poker commentator, now residing in Los Angeles, California. Laak holds a World Poker Tour (WPT) title, a World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet, and ...
and
Kenna James in the first ever underwater poker tournament and was awarded the Caribbean Poker Classic Extreme Poker bracelet.
In March 2007, Helppi won the inaugural Premier League Poker title, defeating some of the all-time greats along the way, such as
Phil Hellmuth
Phillip Jerome Hellmuth Jr. (born July 16, 1964) is an American professional poker player who has won a record seventeen World Series of Poker bracelets, the majority in no-limit hold'em. He is the winner of the Main Event of the 1989 World Se ...
and
Dave "Devilfish" Ulliott. Helppi defeated German pro and two-time WSOP Bracelet winner
Eddy Scharf In heads-up play to win the title.
As the winner of InterPoker's first extreme poker tournament, he earned the right to choose the next year's location. He chose to play it in
Kemi
Kemi (; ; ; ) is a cities of Finland, town and municipalities of Finland, municipality of Finland. It is located approximately from the city of Tornio and the Finland–Sweden border, Swedish border. The distance to Oulu is to the south and t ...
on the frozen
Gulf of Bothnia
The Gulf of Bothnia (; ; ) is divided into the Bothnian Bay and the Bothnian Sea, and it is the northernmost arm of the Baltic Sea, between Finland's west coast ( East Bothnia) and the northern part of Sweden's east coast ( West Bothnia an ...
. He finished second, losing to former WSOP champion
Robert Varkonyi.
As of 2019, his total live tournament winnings exceed $7,700,000.
His WSOP cashes account for over $1,350,000 of those winnings.
[
Helppi is a high level ]paintball
Paintball is a competitive sport, competitive team sport, team shooting sport in which players eliminate opponents from play by hitting them with spherical dye-filled gelatin capsules called Paintball equipment#Paintballs, paintballs that b ...
player and the captain of the Finnish national paintball champions 1997, 2003, 2007, 2008 and 2014. When younger, he played '' Magic: The Gathering'' successfully for several years.
World Series of Poker bracelets
An "O" following a year denotes bracelet(s) won during the World Series of Poker Online
References
External links
Card Player profileHendon Mob profileWPT profileWSOP profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Helppi, Juha
1977 births
Living people
Finnish poker players
World Poker Tour winners
World Series of Poker bracelet winners