Full Flush and Phil Laak win first two World Open V heats - 14/10/2009

Luke "Full Flush" Schwartz continued his cracking form in TV tournaments, taking down the first heat of the PartyPoker.com World Open V at the Palm Beach Casino in London to take the first seat at the final.

Tough Conditions Cause Poor Scores on Day Two

Full Flush came straight from reaching the Full Tilt Poker Million VIII final with the chip lead after the semi-finals at Sky Sports to get past WSOP final table Brit James Akenhead, WPT and WCOOP winner Yevgeniy Timoshenko, Ian Frazer and Andy Ward to be the first player at the final table where the winner will walk away with $250,000.

The second player to reach the final is Phil Laak, with the American star coming back from the dirt to join Full Flush. Laak was down to less than 50k at one point but he won some crucial all-ins to get back in the game but went heads-up against Patrick Funke as the short-stack. Again, Laak worked hard to stay in the game and got some luck when he needed it, holding A8 of clubs against Funke's AK offsuit and hitting the flush to make it through.

The triple-stack structure has been met by universal approval from the players, opening the game up to more play from the players and "This structure is the sickest I have ever played on a single table in front of cameras - it is brilliant," said Laak.

Full Flush also had to fight with a low stack to get to the final, crucially knocking out Timoshenko with Kings to get three-handed, then knocking out Jorg Muller to get heads-up when his deuces held against Muller's AJ. Schwartz held the chip lead going heads-up with Christian Schafer but an early double up saw things level up as the game moved to 20/40k and when we reached 30/60k, Christian was edging towards a 2:1 chip lead. But Full Flush played some aggressive stuff to turn things around and the excited crowd that had gathered around the table thought Schwartz had done it in hand 186 but Schafer was left with 80k - it was all over in the very next hand though when Christian stuck his chips in with A4 and Luke called with QJ and hit a jack to end proceedings.