The newest World Poker Tour Champion was crowned at the Bay 101 Casino in Los Angeles, California on Friday night, as Moon Kim bested a tough final table that included three well-known pro poker players to capture the 2012 WPT Bay 101 Shooting Stars title, along with the nearly $1 million prize awarded to the winner.

Late Friday afternoon six players took their seats under the bright lights at the televised final table, all looking to win their first WPT title. Here is a look at the chip stacks and chip counts the six players brought to the Bay 101 final table:

* Seat 1: Joe Elpayaa – 908,000 (45 BBs)

* Seat 2: Joe Serock – 952,000 (48 BBs)

* Seat 3: Moon Kim – 2,098,000 (105 BBs)

* Seat 4: Ubaid Habib – 2,274,000 (114 BBs)

* Seat 5: Erik Cajelais – 3,640,000 (182 BBs)

* Seat 6: Andrew Badecker – 1,040,000 (52 BBs)

Kim came to the final table as one of the two players within striking distance of chip-leader Erik Cajelais, who finished the tournament in a disappointing 4th place after starting the final table with a dominant chip-lead. Two of the shorter stacks were the first players to be eliminated as Joe Elpayaa was the first player to hit the rail, followed by WSOP bracelet winner Andrew Badecker.

Cajelais took a hit early on that saw drop around 1 million chips and never seemed to recover after that point. Cajeilas was slowly grinded down to the short-stack and eventually eliminated when he pushed his remaining stack into the middle and was called by both Kim and Habib. The two players checked it down to the river and Cajelais finished in third place in the hand, hitting the rail in 4th place.

As three-handed play got underway, it was Moon Kim and another amateur player, Ubaid Habib, as well as poker pro Joe Serock vying for the title. Serock got his last million chips into the pot holding pocket 9’s, but they fell to the K/Q of Moon Kim, leaving Kim and Habib to battle for the title.

35 hands later Moon Kim would win the WPT Bay 101 title when his Flush-Draw hit on the river, bettering the flopped-top-pair of Habib. Here is a look at the complete final table payouts from the tournament:

* 1st: Moon Kim – $960,900

* 2nd: Ubaid Habib – $570,200

* 3rd: Joe Serock – $320,400

* 4th: Erik Cajelais – $256,300

* 5th: Andrew Badecker – $192,300

* 6th: Joseph Elpayaa – $128,200

The World Poker tour will now move on to their next stop in Vienna, Austria, which will get underway on April 10th. The next domestic stop on the World Poker Tour will be the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown which takes place from April 18-23, followed by a second tournament in Florida, the WPT Jacksonville Best Bet Open.

Tags: Amateur Player, Angeles California, Bay 101 Casino, Bright Lights, Erik Cajelais, Friday Afternoon, Habib, Moon Kim, poker players, Poker Pro, Seat 6, Serock, Shooting Stars, Stack, stacks, Striking Distance, Titl, Tour Champion, World Poker Tour, WPT

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 10th, 2012 at 8:46 am 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.