The World Poker Tour Main Event at the Bay 101 Shooting Star tournament series is down to the final table and there is a very familiar face at the top of the leader-board, WPT LA Poker Classic runner-up Paul Volpe. Volpe will take a commanding chip-lead into today’s final table, with over 5.5 million chips; Erik Seidel will enter the day in second place with 3.4 million chips.

Yesterday was the second marathon session in a row, as the record-setting field had to play –down from 44 players to the final table of six, and for the second straight day the players found themselves starting early and finishing late at the Bay 101 Casino in San Jose.

The tournament began with a record-setting field of 643 players, although it should be pointed out that the tournament lowered its buy-in from $10,000 to $7,500 this year; the prize-pool was still larger this time around than last year’s.

Here is a look at the final table seating assignments and chip-counts courtesy of the WPT website, www.worldpokertour.com:

* Seat 1: Joe Nguyen – 2,175,000 (72 bb)

* Seat 2: Erik Seidel – 3,435,000 (114 bb)

* Seat 3: Chris Johnson – 2,740,000 (91 bb)

* Seat 4: Paul Volpe – 5,525,000 (184 bb)

* Seat 5: WeiKai Chang – 2,590,000 (86 bb)

* Seat 6: Joe Kuether – 2,830,000 (94 bb)

And here is a look at the final table prizes on the line also from worldpokertour.com:

* 1st place: $1,138,350 (includes $25,500 seat into WPT World Championship)

* 2nd place: $666,740

* 3rd place: $435,610

* 4th place: $295,590

* 5th place: $208,910

* 6th place: $162,240

Volpe and Seidel will not only be battling for the coveted WPT title (which would be Seidel’s second WPT trophy and Volpe’s first) but also for the headlines for the next week or so, as either playing winning this tournament will be the most talked about story through the weekend at the very least.

Seidel is one of the most accomplished players in the game, and a second WPT title to go along with his 8 WSOP bracelets would go a long way in adding to the Hall of Famer’s already impressive legacy. Volpe on the other hand is coming off a runner-up finish in last week’s WPT LA Poker Classic and is looking to cement himself as a top young tournament player; something he has already accomplished in online poker circles, but live poker success has evaded him until recently.

That being said, there isn’t a player at the final table who is “desperate”. Even Joe Nguyen, who is on the shortest-stack has 72 Big Blinds entering the final table; Volpe has a remarkable 184 Big Blind stack entering Friday’s final table.

 

This entry was posted on Friday, March 8th, 2013 at 9:59 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.