The World Poker Tour has moved up the Pacific coast of the United States this week for the always fun WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star in San Jose, California. Bay 101 has carved out a niche in the tournament circuit as an event which has a high concentration of “name” players. The reason for this is that it is a bounty tournament, with 50 select players having $2,500 bounties on their heads. In addition, the chip leaders after each of the first two starting flights receive a $10,000 bonus. The first winner of that bonus, holding 341,000 chips after Day 1A, is Andrew “luckychewy” Lichtenberger.
While players are randomly seated in tournaments, there did need to be a little bit of planning with the registrants for this tourney, as Bay 101 needed the bounties to be spread relatively even between Days 1A and 1B. Monday’s bounties were:
Dan O’Brien, Shawn Buchanan, Mohsin Charania, David Chiu, Jonathan Duhamel, Tony Dunst, Antonio Esfandiari, Will Failla, Jennifer Harman, Phil Hellmuth, Faraz Jaka, Nam Le, Jason Mercier, Michael Mizrachi, Greg Mueller, Daniel Negreanu, Scotty Nguyen, Dominik Nitsche, Dwyte Pilgrim, David Sands, Noah Schwartz, Erik Seidel, Vanessa Selbst, Mike Sexton, Shannon Shorr, Dan Smith, and J.C. Tran.
Those who eliminate one of the “Shooting Stars” receive a shirt emblazoned with that Star’s name and face and typically get it personally autographed by their victim. Should a Shooting Star win the tournament, he or she would win their own bounty and, of course, get to proudly wear a t-shirt with their own face on it. This has never happened.
Additionally, this is a re-entry tournament in which players eliminated on Day 1A can re-buy for Day 1B. Should a Shooting Star bust and re-buy, there will not be a second bounty placed on his or her head.
Bounties aside, one of the biggest hands of day came right before the tournament shut down for the night. Jeff Madsen raised pre-flop and WPT Borgata Winter Poker Open champion Andy Hwang re-raised to 4,300. Anna Wroblewski called, as did Madsen. The flop was T♥-9♠-8♦. Madsen checked and then all hell broke loose. The three players kept raising and re-raising each other until Hwang and Wroblewski were both all-in (Hwang had Wroblewski covered) and Madsen, holding the most chips of the trio, called both.
Madsen held T♠-8♠ for Queens and Eights with a back-door spade draw, Wroblewski showed a set of Nines, and Hwang had flopped the nut straight to the Queen. The 5♥ and 7♥ landed on the turn and river, allowing Hwang’s hand to hold. That doubled him up to 240,000, while Madsen was crippled, falling to 12,000 chips, and Wroblewski was knocked out. Hwang had rocketed up to the third spot on the leader board.
Bay 1B of the Bay 101 Shooting Star will start at 11:00am PT as a new group of players tries to join the 109 who made it out of Day 1A.
2013 World Poker Tour Bay 101 Shooting Star – Day 1A Chip Leaders
1. Andrew Lichtenberger – 341,000
2. Stephen Bokor – 274,200
3. Andy Hwang – 242,000
4. Phaly Nou – 232,800
5. James Calderaro – 205,200
6. Greg White – 183,000
7. Brendon Rubie – 180,300
8. Isaac Baron – 178,500
9. Faraz Jaka – 177,300
10. Lori Bare – 156,300
