Battle for the final table spots at the PartyPoker Premier League will climax today with the last of the 6 heats. As always, if you don't want to spoil the suspense ahead of the upcoming tv broadcasts of the show, don't read any further.


After heat 5, each of the 12 players are still in with at least a mathematical chance to continue in the tournament, and only leaders Phil Laak and David Benyamine are sure of a place at the final table, though Giovanni Safina will like his chances, too.

Heat 5 was won by Ian Frazer who jumped to 4th place in the league standings. He beat his fellow Brit Luke Schwartz heads up for the win, and the Italian online qualifier Giovanni Safina continued his good run by finishing 3rd.

There were some funny scenes when Phil Hellmuth was eliminated in 7th place. Hellmuth opened to 17k and Luke Schwartz re-raised to 47k. Hellmuth moved all-in for 223k and Schwartz went into thought. "Could you ever have AQ here?" he asked. Hellmuth kept his cool and after some time Schwartz finally made the call and turned over - you guessed it - AK. Hellmuth indeed had AQ and he was in deep trouble.

"What were you thinking?" Tony G exclaimed. "Let's get the trike!"

Hellmuth refused to ride the trike, but finally relented to riding a bike (with Tony G chasing him with the trike around the tournament area) when the board had blanked out. Meanwhile, Schwartz had left the table and when he came back to see the result, he commented, “I saw him on the bike and I knew it was good."

Giovanni Safina has shown he can hold his own among the pros, and he didn't hesitate to say his opinion on Luke Schwartz when asked about it: "He's just a little boy."

Heat 6 will decide the final league table standings; top 4 go straight to the 6-handed final table while places 5 through 8 will play heads up matches to decide the other two spots.

Standings (players marked with * will play in Heat 6):

   1. Phil Laak – 48 points *
   2. David Benyamine – 35 points *
   3. Giovanni Safina – 29 points
   4. Ian Frazer – 26 points
   5. Luke Schwartz – 23 points *
   6. JC Tran – 20 points
   7. Yevgeniy Timoshenko – 16 points
   8. Roland De Wolfe – 14 points *
   9. Vanessa Rousso – 12 points *
  10. Daniel Negreanu – 10 points *
  11. Phil Hellmuth – 8 points *
  12. Tony G – 9 points *

Source: PartyPoker Blog.