Following the elimination of Brian McAllister, Dean Blatt found himself short stacked against the two strong American players. However it didn’t take long for Blatt to fight his way back into contention.

Blatt chipped up with some small pots before the three players agreed amongst themselves to flatten the payout structure. The new payouts would be:

1st $120,000
2nd $86,100
3rd $57,400

Basically, $11,900 was taken off the top prize, with $1,900 added to second and a $10,000 boost to unlucky third.

That deal seemed to benefit Blatt as the short stack, but he quickly changed that around when he cold four-bet with pocket queens. Scott Davies couldn’t let go of pocket tens, and the young Aussie landed a game-changing double up.

Davies was suddenly on the short stack and fighting for his survival – an unfamiliar position after leading for most of this final table. Davies found one double up with K♥ 10♠ against Blatt’s A♥ 4♦ but couldn’t make it two double ups in a row.

When Dean Blatt moved all in from the small blind, Scott Davies called off his last 550,000 in the big blind with Q♠ J♦ . Two picture cards looked pretty solid for Davies but he trailed Blatt’s K♠ 5♥ . The board ran out A♥ 9♣ 3♠ A♣ 7♥ with no help for Davies to send him to the rail in third place for $57,400.

With that, we now find ourselves heads-up for the title. Dean Blatt has around 3.15 million in chips for a solid lead against Patrick Mahoney’s 1.7 million.

The two remaining players decided to take a quick break, which was good timing while the latest “Live Like a King” promotion took place on the adjacent stage. It gave the Blatt and Mahoney another chance to look at the numbers but that just brought even more confusion.

It probably didn’t help that the music was blaring, making it near impossible to have a conversation. At first the two players wanted to do an ICM deal for the full amount, but they were informed they had to leave something in the middle to play for. They were trying to nut out the details but after several more minutes of talk, Poker Room Manager Deb Wyatt gave them one more minute before instructing the dealer to recommence dealing. Dean Blatt rushed to his seat, but not in time as his cards were mucked and he lost his small blind. He wasn’t pleased with that, but Patrick Mahoney kindly agreed to give him a walk next hand and order was restored. They attempted to talk further over the table, but it all seemed too hard for Mahoney as they blew off another deal and stuck with the numbers above.

With that all out of the way, the cards are back in the air and the ANZPT Perth title is on the line!

Heath “TassieDevil” Chick is a Freelance Contributor for the PokerStars Blog.

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