Normally, a ‘cold deck’ isn’t a term that’s embraced by your average poker player, but, on this occasion, if you had the ‘coldest deck’ it probably meant that you’d won the latest display of Extreme Poker.
After the success of underwater poker in St Kitts, it was time to go to the other extreme and head over to the icy surroundings of Kemi, Finland. Selected by previous victor, Juha Helppi, the Snow Castle in the Artic Fields of Finland was the stage for four maniacs who, quite literally, were bracing themselves for a flurry of cold cards.
Playing in below freezing conditions, Varkonyi and Helppi were joined by Peter Larsson of Sweden, Rene Christensen of Denmark, and two online qualifiers, one of whom was Daniel Stein from sunny (?) England.
Although surrounded by ice, this wasn’t a freezout competition. In fact, players could rebuy by conceding various items of clothing. If they rejected the offer, then they would be eliminated from the game. On hearing of this news, yours truly jammed the phones with requests of a late entry in the 
form of Angelina Jolie, but, to my chagrin, my demands fell on stony ground.
With the relative unknowns succumbing to the pressure, the final two was to see Helppi and Varkonyi do battle for the title, the latter down to a T-shirt after taking an early rebuy. However, even with this increasingly hypothermia-threatening burden, Varkonyi fought through the cold to take the title and become the latest Extreme Poker Champion.
As a reward for his victory, the 2002 WSOP Champion had the enviable honour of selecting Extreme Poker’s destination. And so, fresh off his win, Varkonyi opts for a more vertigo-inducing battlezone with the next batch of contestants facing off inside a plane thousands of feet above the desert.
Doesn’t sound that bad, does it? Well, it wouldn’t be if each loser didn’t have to jump from the plane following elimination. Now that’s cabin pressure!