Odd News

Poker players take 15,000-ft risk

(AP)
Updated: 2006-07-27 20:20

In the skies over the desert outside Las Vegas, three amateur players and a would-be pro tried to keep their poker faces at 15,000 feet.

The rules: whoever won didn't have to parachute out of a plane. The losers did.

Jamie Glasser screams as the and his tandem master, Jim Dolan, fall out of an airplane in Jean, Nev. on Wednesday, July 26, 2006. Glasser was playing in the Loser's Leap Poker Tournament sponsored by Interpoker.com where participants must jump out of the airplane after losing. [AP]

The Wednesday event was part of InterPoker.com's Extreme Poker series and was scheduled during the World Series of Poker tournament, which began June 25.

In Extreme Poker, novice players battle in online tournaments for the right to play Texas Hold 'em in strange locations. The first was played underwater. The second was played on a polar ice cap in Finland.

This time Patrick Neary, 23, from Prince Edward Island, Canada, Jamie Glasser, 24, from Chicago and Fraser Linkleter, 28, from London and Nick "Stoxtrader" Grudzien, 29, from New York, piled into a Short's Skivan plane to try their hand against Phil "the Unabomber" Laak.

Grudzien was the lucky player who didn't have to hit the silk. But Grudzien wasn't about to fold 'em. No stranger to risk, he went back up for a free jump.