Ready. Aim. Fire. That's how Juha Helppi approaches a poker tournament, and if you're sitting at his table, you don't want to be caught in his crosshairs.

The same method applies away from the table as well. Helppi was the captain of a Finnish national paintball champion team, making his aim deadly on and off the felt.

Perhaps Helppi is just a natural sportsman. Born in 1977 in Turku, Finland, he was also a good soccer player while growing up. He didn't pick up poker until he was 21, but it was another sport that seemed to suit him just fine.

Helppi had taken a job as a casino dealer, and that's where his friends showed him the various types of poker and how to play them. They also introduced him to playing Internet poker.

With the help of playing online at Paradise Poker and reading Hold'em Poker for Advanced Players by David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth, he turned himself into a winner.

According to Helppi, each year he's been a bigger winner online than the previous year. He took that success to the live poker arena, and in 2001 he began his rise in the tournament world with a third-place finish at the Helsinki Freezeout.

Less than a year later he walked away with a World Poker Tour win at the Aruba Poker Classic. He defeated Kathy Liebert on his way to the victory in the amateur tournament, taking out fellow countryman Anssi Tuulivirda heads-up for the win.

His victory earned him a heads-up round with Phil Gordon who had won the professional tournament. Gordon was the clear favorite against an "amateur" Helppi, but the Finn's online experience paid off.

Showing how good online players really are, Helppi beat back repeated bluff attempts by Gordon to steal pots and went on to win. He took home a nice Aruba tan, some cash to add to his bankroll and a seat in the WPT Battle of Champions later that season.

At the Battle of Champions he came in fourth and has made it deep in a few other WPT events since, including a final table appearance at the Grand Prix de Paris in 2005, where he came in a close second to Roland de Wolfe.

In fact, Helppi has been cashing in tournaments all over the world since his WPT win, making him a truly international poker player. One of his more interesting and adventurous events was the InterPoker.com Extreme Poker Challenge.

InterPoker.com's first challenge was the Deep Water Series of Poker, an event that took six players down to the bottom of the Caribbean to play poker under water. Helppi, who is sponsored by InterPoker.com, was joined by fellow pros Kenna James and Phil "Unabomber" Laak as well as online players Peter Marcus, Louise Halle and Andy Goetsch.

The players were out of the game if they busted out, ran out of air or had to surface. Despite a mask that was filling with water, Helppi outlasted them all and won the first-ever Extreme Poker Challenge.

As the winner, Helppi got to pick the venue of the next Extreme Challenge and he opted to try for another win with home-field advantage. So the next game took place on the Arctic Ice Shelf in Kemi, Finland.

In March 2006, Helppi and Robert Varkonyi were joined by four online players who qualified on InterPoker.com to play in below zero weather on the ice shelf. After taking a bad beat early in the game, Varkonyi gave up his coat and played in just a t-shirt to buy back into the game. The risk paid off as the blue-lipped Varkonyi did laps around the table to stay warm and managed to pull of a win, leaving Helppi in second.

Helppi hasn't opted to play in the Extreme Poker Challenges since then, but that may be because he's been busy amassing more money for his bankroll on the tournament circuit. A large chunk came from the 2006 World Series of Poker, where Helppi cashed in three events and nearly walked away with his first WSOP bracelet win.

Unfortunately he ran into Phil Hellmuth during the $1,000 No-Limit Hold'em WSOP event and ended up in second place, while Hellmuth took home his 10th bracelet.

Helppi did get his revenge though. Less than eight months later he went on to compete in the PartyPoker.com Premier League Poker tournament in England and become its first winner. One of the players he beat to get there: Hellmuth, who finished third in the final.

When Helppi got his WPT win in 2002, the top prize was $50,000. That's a far cry from the $1 million plus that’s dished out to WPT winners these days, but that hasn't prevented Helppi from making his way over the $1 million mark for live tournament winnings; it just means he's had to work harder for it.

He now has more than $1.4 million in tournament cashes since his debut at the Helsinki Freezeout in 2001, making him a force to reckon with on the tournament circuit and a player to watch as he is bound to continue amassing big cash as he continues his poker career.