After a long day at the Bay 101 poker tables 54 of the 142 players that registered on Day 1a of the WPT Championship event, the Bay 101 Shooting Stars, remained in the hunt for the title. The remaining players will now wait for Day 1b to commence, and then the two starting fields will be combined on Wednesday for Day 2 of the tournament.

Of the 54 survivors from Day 1a only 5 of the 19 “Shooting Stars” remained. Each Shooting Star has a $5,000 bounty placed on their head, which is collected by the player that eliminates them from the tournament. So who were the five poker stars who survived the day with their bounty intact? Here is the list complete with chip counts from the WPT website: Vanessa Selbst (124,500), Christian Harder (107,700), Jonathan Duhamel (102,200), Mike Matusow (83,800) and Kathy Liebert (61,500).

Here is a look at the Top 10 chip counts from Day 1a of the Bay 101 Shooting Stars Main Event:

1. Bryce Yockey — 245,300

2. Brandon Wong — 195,600

3. Amir Khaziri — 187,700

4. Shannon Shorr — 183,400

5. David Peters — 142,100

6. Neil Blumenfield — 139,400

7. Erik Cajelais — 128,900

8. Vanessa Selbst — 125,400

9. Christian Harder — 107,700

10. Jonathan Duhamel — 102,200

Also making the cut on Day 1a were Jonathan Little, Layne Flack, Darren Elias, Amir Lehovat, Josh Arieh, and David Pham.

Here is the complete list of Shooting Star bounties from Day 1a: Mike Matusow, Gavin Smith, Kathy Liebert, Will Failla, Sam Stein, Jonathan Duhamel, Liv Boeree, Maria Ho, Joe Hachem, Daniel Negreanu, Christian Harder, Joe Tehan, Erik Seidel, Andy Frankenberger, Vanessa Selbst, Phil Hellmuth, Dwyte Pilgrim, Faraz Jaka, and Matt Savage.

The Shooting Star bounties on Day 1b will include Scotty Nguyen, Barry Greenstein, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, Men “The Master” Nguyen, Allen Cunningham, 2011 Bay 101 winner Alan Sternberg, and Mike Sexton who landed at his first WPT final table in this event last year.

For finishing the day as the chip-leader, Yockey earned an additional $10,000 prize, which puts him on what is essentially a freeroll in the tournament –the Day 1b chip-leader will also be rewarded with a $10,000 bonus.

Day 1b will see roughly 30 Shooting Stars, where the tournament field is expected to be much larger. Day 1b action will get underway at 10:45AM local time (are poker players up this early?) and once again the tournament will play 10 levels before calling it a night.

Last year the Bay 101 Main Event saw 415 entrants, a number the 2012 running could possibly eclipse if the field size for Day 1b is roughly double Day 1a –in 2011 Day 1a also saw 142 players enter the tournament.

Tags: Barry Greenstein, Brandon Wong, Daniel Negreanu, Erik Cajelais, Erik Seidel, Joe Hachem, Joe Tehan, Jonathan Little, Josh Arieh, Kathy Liebert, Layne Flack, Main Event 1, Matt Savage, Mike Matusow, Mike Sexton, phil hellmuth, Poker stars, Scotty Nguyen, Shannon Shorr, WPT Championship

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 6th, 2012 at 12:50 pm and is filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.