Lady Luck Underwater Poker Championship in Florida Crowns Winner

(Photo: Facebook.com)

Splashing the pot ranks high on the list of "dont's" regarding poker table etiquette, but the term took on a new meaning recently at the first annual Lady Luck Underwater Poker Championship.

Poker players donned scuba gear and commenced to play a poker tournament on the deck of the Lady Luck, a submerged 324-foot ship lying on the bottom of the sea along with more than a dozen other sunken vessels at Shipwreck Park about a mile and a half off the coast of Pompano Beach, Florida.

Prior to the intentional sinking of the Lady Luck, an artist named Dennis MacDonald fashioned a poker table on its upper deck to match the casino-themed decorations on the main deck, according to Southflorida.com. The first anniversary of the ship's sinking on July 23 seemed to members of South Florida Diving Headquarters as a dandy time to hold the first annual underwater poker tournament.

Online Qualifiers Eliminate Fish

Complete with waterproof playing cards, clay chips, and the required scuba gear, six poker players who qualified online from a total of 20 that were also certified divers took the 80-foot plunge and descended to the Lady Luck poker table. There was no buy-in for the half-dozen online winners, who dove for free to compete in the fun tournament, courtesy of the diving club.

Jessica Beebe, who organizes trips for divers to explore sunken ships, emerged as the first Lady Luck Underwater Poker Champion. Her prize was a huge trophy and the right to be among the first divers to inspect the next ship scheduled to go down at Shipwreck Park next month - the Okinawa.

(Photo: Facebook.com)

The underwater poker tournament was shown on Scuba Nation TV. Several dozen divers turned out to rail the event and perhaps check out some of the other ships down there that include a tanker said to be longer than the length of a football field.