Latest Extreme Poker Challenge - 'Loser's Leap'

LONDON -- Soaring over Sin City, InterPoker.com is getting ready for the World Series of Poker by throwing professional poker players out of a plane above the Las Vegas desert at the latest Extreme
Extreme Poker challenge will ask players to call, raise and rip.  Poker Challenge -- "Loser's Leap" which takes off on July 26 at Jean airport. Poker pros such as Phil Laak, Antonio Esfandiari & Scott Fischman will load into a SkyVan aircraft and deal the cards. As they run out of chips, they will run out of time, and quickly be shown the door of the flying poker room -- at 10,000 feet. The last person in the plane (besides the pilot) will be the latest Extreme Poker Champion.

As the third installment of the Extreme Poker series, the Texas Hold 'Em style poker game will pit members of the InterPoker.com professional poker team and players who qualified for the event online through the InterPoker.com site. The qualifying online tournament takes place on Saturday July 15th at 14:30 EDT. The winner of this tournament will be on the Loser's Leap plane on the 26th of July, playing with the pros against each other in a single winner-take-all game, thousands of feet above Las Vegas and only days before the World Series of Poker Main Event. Extreme Poker's Challenge, Loser's Leap, will last until one player wins all the chips, or until the plane runs out of gas -- in which case even the pilot will have to jump.

"This Extreme Poker event creates an unprecedented challenge for the players to overcome because each of them will have to fight through the stress of knowing that if they lose, they're going to jump out of a perfectly good airplane," said InterPoker spokesperson Peter Marcus. "In this event, the poker pros aren't just overcoming some discomfort or strange circumstances, there will be a huge element of adrenaline and a degree of genuine fear. That will make for an even more entertaining time for everyone."

Previous Extreme Poker events took place underwater on the ocean floor off the coast of St. Kitts in the Caribbean, where Finnish pro and WPT event champion Juha Helppi became the first ever Extreme Poker Champion. He then chose the world's largest ice castle, in the city of Kemi in his home country of Finland as the setting for the second Extreme Poker challenge, which was won by 2002 WSOP winner Robert Varkonyi.

"Having gone down to the wire and come up victorious twice in the 2004 World Series of Poker, I know a thing or two about performing under pressure," said InterPoker Pro Scott Fischman. "But, I don't think anything can match knowing that if you play a hand wrong, you're going to be trusting your life to a big piece of cloth. But, on the plus side, I think it will be hard for the other players to bluff when they realize they've got no cards and a short walk out the door awaiting them."

Players can qualify online for "Loser's Leap" by checking the tournament room at InterPoker.com for ongoing qualifying rounds.

The "Loser's Leap" tournament is the third in a series of Extreme Poker events set in locations around the globe, each aimed to test the limits of even the most seasoned tournament players. Future settings will include NASCAR racetrack, suspended platforms and bat infested caves.