Party Poker Premier League lineup set

On March 17^th 15 of the top poker players in the world along with one amateur qualifier will descend on the Aspers Casino in London, England for the Party Poker Premier League VI. The event features a $125,000 buy-in and will be played in the unique point-scoring format that has come to symbolize the Premier League.

The Premier League separates the players into two groups of eight. Each group will play in four preliminary matches and players are awarded points based on their finish positions. The top three point getters from each group will move on to the final table, as will the winners of a heads-up match between the fourth and fifth place finishers in each bracket.

Players’ final table chip-stacks will also be impacted by the number of points they accumulate, with each point worth 10,000 chips at the final table. Last year Matthew Frankland led the way in the preliminary rounds, amassing 40 points (400,000 chips), while Tom Dwan came into the final table with just 280,000 chips after winning his heads-up match to advance.

That being said, chips do not always equate to finish position as last year’s tournament illustrates. Here is a look at the chip-counts heading into the final table:

• Mathew Frankland — 400,000
• Daniel Cates – 380,000
• Sam Trickett — 330,000
• Patrik Antoius – 320,000
• Scott Seiver – 300,000
• Tony G — 300,000
• Phil Laak – 290,000
• Tom Dwan – 280,000

And here is the way the tournament played out:

• 1^st place: Scott Seiver — $500,000
• 2^nd place: Daniel Cates — $300,000
• 3^rd place: Phil Laak — $175,000
• 4^th place: Patrik Antonius — $125,000
• 5^th place: Tony G — $100,000
• 6^th place: Tom Dwan — $80,000
• 7^th place: Mathew Frankland — $65,000
• 8^th place: Sam Trickett — $55,000

The final two entrants added to the premier League roster were Jason Mercier and Tobias Reinkemeier, who booked their spots in the tournament on Thursday, locking-up the final two professional spots available. Mercier and Reinkemeier will be joined by Daniel Negreanu, Phil Hellmuth, Premier League V winner Scott Seiver, Tony G, Marvin Rettenmaier, Phil Laak, Antonio Esfandiari, Jennifer Tilly, Dan Shak, Daniel Cates, Luke Schwartz, Jonathan Duhamel, and Sam Trickett.

The 15 players who accepted their invitation to the Party Poker Premier League VI tournament will be joined by an online qualifier, who will have a shot at the $500,000 first-place prize without anteing-up the massive $125,000 entry fee.

For the first time poker fans will be able to watch the Party Poker Premier League play out in real time, as the Party Poker blog will stream the event, with hole cards, and with the commentary duties being handled by the inimitable Jesse May. May was asked about doing the commentary for the event on the Party Poker blog, to which he replied, “The fact that the PartyPoker.com Premier League VI is going to be streamed on the internet this year is a new realm for the event. It’s an immersion. It is twelve hours of poker a day for a week of these superstars only playing amongst themselves. I don’t recall something like this ever having been done.”