On the heels of his runner-up finish at the WPT LA Poker Classic, Lock Poker pro Paul Volpe is once again in contention for a WPT title, this time at the Bay 101 Shooting Star tournament. Volpe is the only player to end Day 2 of the tournament with over 1 million chips, and will lead the final 44 players into Day 3’s action on Thursday.

The original plan for Day 2 of the tournament was to play down to just 18 players, but after a record-setting turnout in the two Day 1 flights on Monday and Tuesday that plan was scrapped and the field was only trimmed to 44 players despite playing from 11 AM to 2 AM on Wednesday! Thursday’s “plan” will be for the players to play down to the official final table of six, but that may be a tall order, and I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see another day of play lasting 15 hours.

The remaining players in the field seems like a who’s who of poker pros, as names like Antonio Esfandiari, Erik Seidel, Carlos Mortensen, Kathy Liebert, and Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier are all still in the hunt, along with a slew of other poker pros like Matt Stout, Brendon Rubie, Isaac Baron, Maria Ho, Christian Harder, Kyle Julius, Todd Terry, John Racener, Jeff Madsen, Andrew Lichtenberger, and Jason Somerville. Another storyline to keep an eye on is Paul Klann, the amateur player who bested Volpe at the LA Poker Classic, and is also still in the mix at the Bay 101 Main Event!

Here is a look at the Top 10 chip counts heading into Day 3 of the WT Bay 101 Shooting Star Main Event:

1. Paul Volpe — 1,394,000

2. Brendon Rubie — 988,000

3. Isaac Baron — 896,000

4. Steve Behm — 854,000

5. Maria Ho — 805,000

6. Antonio Esfandiari — 787,000

7. James Anderson — 770,000

8. Erik Seidel — 751,000

9. Matt Stout — 687,000

10. Jordan Cristos — 672,000

On Wednesday we also got our first look at the final table payouts for the tournament, and as expected the first-place prize topped $1 million:

* 1st place: $1,138,350

* 2nd place: $666,740

* 3rd place: $435,610

* 4th place: $295,590

* 5th place: $208,910

* 6th place: $162,240

As stated above the plan for Thursday is to play down to the final table, and after eight more eliminations the tournament will switch to a six-handed format. When play gets underway at Noon local time the players will find themselves in level 20, with blinds at 5,000/10,000 with a 1,000 chip ante; the average stack to start the day will be 438,000.

You can follow the Day 3 action at the official World Poker Tour (WPT) website at www.worldpokertour.com

 

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 7th, 2013 at 8:07 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.