Yeah, remember that in conditions you use the dollar variable rather than a vb: variable.
Also, the first option would check if $item_premium is equal to the string 1, whereas the second would check if $item_premium is equal to the boolean 1 (i.e. "true").
Wouldn't it only do that if he had three equals? In php I ma under the assumption that == '1' is the same as == 1. You'd need to do === 1 for numbers, === '1' for string and === true for boolean as far as I know.