Professional poker player J. C. Tran is the winner of the third edition of the PartyPoker Premier League! The PPL was an event hosted by PartyPoker where 12 poker professionals played daily 6-handed SNG's that would award points to a leaderboard. After four days of action, the top 4 of the leaderboard - J. C. Tran, Peter Eastgate, Juha Helppi and Tom Dwan, automatically qualified to the final table. The following four - Annette Obrestad, Roland De Wolfe, Tony G and Vicky Coren, disputed the other two places in the final through best-of-3 heads-up matches. De Wolfe and Tony G defeated Obrestad and Coren respectively and got themselves into the 6-handed final table.
That said, the finalists were, from top to bottom of the leaderboard: JC Tran, Peter Eastgate, Juha Helppi, Tom Dwan, Tony G and Roland De Wolfe. Each player’s stack was determined by the amount of points collected in the league, multiplied by ten. Take a look at the chip counts before the final table:
Seat 1: Tom Dwan (United States) - 260,000
Seat 2: Juha Helppi (Finland) - 340,000
Seat 3: Tony G (Australia) - 260,000
Seat 4: Roland de Wolfe (United Kingdom) - 230,000
Seat 5: JC Tran (United States) - 450,000
Seat 6: Peter Eastgate (Denmark) - 390,000
The first to go home was the WSOP main event champion Peter Eastgate, who received $30,000 for the 6th place. Roland De Wolfe was eliminated in 5th place, when his pair of Kings didn’t hold against the Juha Helppi’s AQo. Online hero Tom “durrr” Dwan finished in 4th place. He was struggling since the beginning of the day, and his last chips were gone when Tony G beat his top pair with the same pair, but higher kicker. Durrr earned $50,000.
Juha Helppi, who was trying to win his second PPL title, was eliminated by Tony G, who had  and hit a Queen on the flop. Even though Tony G started the heads-up with the chip lead, he was eventually defeated by JC Tran. After the flop came   Tony G checked and answered Tran’s 60k bet with check-raise all-in. Tran called and showed  for a pair of Sevens, while Tony G turned up  with an open ended straight draw. Turn and river didn’t change a thing, and JC Tran became the champion of the PartyPoker Premier League III, earning $300,000! The runner-up, Tony G, received $150,000.
Final results
1st: JC Tran - $300,000
2nd: Tony G - $150,000
3rd: Juha Helppi - $80,000
4th: Tom Dwan - $50,000
5th: Roland de Wolfe - $40,000
6th: Peter Eastgate - $30,000 |