Canadian ex-WSOP champ strikes first in this year’s Party Poker Premier League
The first heat from group A of this year’s Party Poker Premier League is in the bag, and it’s ex-WSOP World Champion Jonathan Duhamel who is leading the way with maximum points.
Taking place at the Aspers Casino in Stratford, each competitor had to cough up $125k of his or her own money just to compete in the ultra-exclusive event with the overall winner walking away with $450k.
Featuring sixteen of the games very best players, surprisingly, it was Scott Seiver, the in-form player in the world right now and also last year’s Premier League Champion who crashed out first in 8th place when his pair of Jacks came off second best to Antonio Esfandiari’s Ace-King.
But it’s not all over just yet for the defending champion. He will have three more attempts to gain some much-needed points, with the top three highest scorers in each group progressing to the final table.
Following closely behind Seiver in heat 1 was Dan “jungleman12” Cates, who with a short stack was forced to shove his Jd-9d into Daniel Negreanu’s A-2 and it didn’t improve. The early 7th place exit gave Cates the minimum amount of points.
With two of the hot favourites already out, Antonio Esfandiari was next to go. Sam Trickett got lucky and busted him, hitting trip tens on the flop verses Esfandiari’s pocket queens.
Phil Hellmuth hit the rail in fifth when his threes ran into Negreanu’s nines. And the Canadian would follow closely behind when he got all his chips in on an ace-high diamond flush draw only to be called by Duhamel who held a ten for top pair.
Marvin Rettenmaier a lot of peoples tip for Premier League glory this time round put in a solid first performance, eventually finishing in third place when Sam Trickett got lucky again hitting four cards to his straight and crippling Rettenmaier to the point of no return.
With play down to two, Trickett held a modest 2-to-1 lead over Duhamel but this quickly grew to almost 4-to-1.
Duhmael not one to give up though, played his way back into the match and in the end it was Trickett who was forced into making a fatal mistake. Unluckily for the Brit, he chose the wrong time to push with his K-J, when Duhamel made the call with his Ah-9h. An ace fell on the flop and Trickett fell further behind, but he wasn’t completely dead, as the Brit still had a flush draw. But the man from Nottingham’s luck had finally run out and the flush never fell giving Duhamel the win and the maximum 16 points.
Here are the current Group A standings:
1. Jonathan Duhamel – 16 points – $32,000
2. Sam Trickett – 11 points – $22,000
3. Marvin Rettenmaier – 8 points – $16,000
4. Daniel Negreanu – 6 points – $12,000
5. Phil Hellmuth – 4 points – $8,000
6. Antonio Esfandiari – 3 points – $6,000
7. Daniel Cates – 2 points – $4,000
8. Scott Seiver – 0 points – $0
