After another long night of poker at the Playground Poker Club in Montreal, Canada, on Friday, Sorel Mizzi emerged as the victor in Heat 3 of the partypoker Premier League VII event while Heat 1 winner Jeff Gross stepped back to the top of the heap in the overall standings.
The first two heats of the Premier League were drawn out affairs and it appeared from the beginning that Heat 3 was going to be no different. The players – Heat 2 winner and overall leader Jason Koon, defending champion Dan Shak, Jonathan Duhamel, Phil Laak, Vanessa Selbst, Dan Colman, Mizzi and Gross – spent the first 40 hands content to shift chips amongst each other. On Hand 43, however, what looked like was going to be a split pot actually turned out to result in the first elimination.
Moving all in pre-flop, Laak was called by Mizzi and both men tabled an A-K, Laak’s suited in hearts and Mizzi’s with a spade and a club. The A♣ 10♣ 8♦ flop didn’t change the situation any, but the J♣ on the turn now gave Mizzi nine outs to taking the hand outright to the flush. A 7♣ on the river stunned the table, especially Mizzi, who didn’t realize he had caught one of his flush outs to eliminate Laak. Leaving the table, Laak collected zero points for his eighth place finish and has his work cut out for him over his next two heats.
Mizzi, with his newfound chips, tormented the table for the next 30 hands. He took chips from seemingly everyone on the felt as he built up his chip stack to 973,000 by the 73rd hand of the night, more than half the chips on the table among the seven players. By the time the dinner break came following Shak’s elimination of Duhamel to bring the table to six-handed play, Mizzi’s stack broached the 1.2 million mark and the rest of the table struggled to keep up.
The withering attack from Mizzi continued when the players came back from the break as the man formerly known as ‘Imper1um’ knocked off Koon in sixth place and Selbst in fifth to rocket over the 1.5 million chip mark. Colman, Shak and Gross between them could only muster 850,000 chips, so it did appear that this was Mizzi’s match to lose. After Mizzi’s elimination of Shak on Hand 117 (a cooler of a situation that saw Shak move all in with pocket sixes, only for Mizzi to wake up with pocket Queens), he sat on a 1.8 million chip stack and appeared to be able to do no wrong.
Poker sometimes has a way of bringing you back to earth, however, as Mizzi found out on Hand 118. Gross moved all in with only an off suit K-J and Mizzi, continuing his steamroller run at the Heat 3 table, made the call with pocket sevens. Ahead pre-flop in the race, Mizzi instead saw a Jack come on the flop to push Gross into the lead. Looking for one of the two sevens in the deck, Mizzi instead saw a ten and a deuce hit the board as he shipped a marginal part of his stack to a very fortunate Gross.
This only seemed to irritate Mizzi as, sixteen hands later, he would earn another knockout to get to heads up play. Pushing all in with his Q-8, Colman was looked up by Mizzi’s A-8 and, as a reluctant Colman pleaded for a Queen, saw the board run out only Jack high to end his night. As he scooped up the chips, Mizzi eyed the stack of his heads up opponent, Gross, and saw he held way over a 2:1 advantage.
The heads up battle between Mizzi and Gross would turn out to be a war itself. Gross, whose conservative play had brought him into the mano y mano fight, suddenly started to catch some cards. Within 20 hands of heads up action, Gross actually was able to move into the lead. He would hold that hand for the majority of the heads up play before a key hand switched the rankings and led to the end.
On Hand 209, the two men stared at a rare occurrence on the poker table, a straight on the board (J-10-9-8-7), and tried to decide what to do. First to act, Gross bet out at the pot in an attempt to take it down entirely rather than split it, but Mizzi made the call and tabled a Queen to best Gross’ board play. With those chips, Mizzi moved back into the lead and, two hands later, was able to beat Gross when his A-7 stayed ahead of Gross’ J♦ 10♦ (which had a flush draw after the flop) to end the night.
1. Sorel Mizzi – 14 points
2. Jeff Gross – 11 points
3. Dan Colman – 9 points
4. Dan Shak – 7 points
5. Vanessa Selbst – 5 points
6. Jason Koon – 3 points
7. Jonathan Duhamel – 1 point
8. Phil Laak – 0 points
With Heat 3 in the books and almost everyone at least two heats into their scheduled four heat preliminaries, Gross has jumped back on top of the overall leaderboard for the Premier League:
1. Jeff Gross (2 of 4 heats played) – 25 points
2. Sorel Mizzi (2/4) – 21 points
3. Jason Koon (3/4) – 20 points
(tie) Dan Colman (2/4) – 20 points
5. Dan Cates (2/4) – 16 points
6. Scott Seiver (2/4) – 11 points
7. Jonathan Duhamel (2/4) – 10 points
8. Dan Shak (2/4) – 7 points
9. Brian Rast (2/4) – 6 points
(tie) Vanessa Selbst (2/4) – 6 points
11. Antonio Esfandiari (1/4) – 5 points
12. Phil Laak (2/4) – 3 points
This afternoon’s Heat 4 play will bring back the only player who has yet to play two heats, Esfandiari, for his second go-round. He will be joined by Cates, Mizzi, Duhamel, Laak, Selbst, Colman and Seiver; Esfandiari will need to get some “magic” going if he is going to stick around beyond the Heat Stages of the Premier League schedule, but he has a tough lineup facing him.
