Jour 1a of the WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star is underway! Tournaments start early here at Bay 101, and play began about ten minutes after the scheduled 10:45 am start.
As is the custom here, there are 25 "Shooting Stars" for each starting day, and each one of them carries a $5,000 bounty -- bust the player, collect the bounty. (And an autographed Shooting Star t-shirt.) There is also a $10,000 bonus to the Day 1un et un jour 1b chipleaders.
Brandon Cantu dominated this event last year from wire to wire. He collected the $10,000 bonus for being the Day 1a chipleader, and collected six more bounties along the way ($30,000) to add to his first-place prize of $1 million. On the playdown day with eight players left, Cantu went on one of the most amazing streaks we've ever seen, winning 17 hands in a row. Everything fell Cantu's way for more than 30 minutes, as his bluffs weren't called, and when people challenged him, he had the goods.
Here is the full list of Shooting Stars for the Bay 101 Événement principal:
Jour 1A
- Michael Binger
- Andy Bloch
- Todd Brunson
- Hoyt Corkins
- Allen Cunningham
- Freddy Deeb
- Annie Duke
- Layne Flack
- Jamie Gold
- Dan Harington
- Phil Hellmuth
- Jean Juanda
- Eric Lindgren
- Jonathan Petit
- Mike Matusow
- Nenad Médecin
- David Pham
- Joe Sebok
- Erik Seidel
- David Chanteur
- Gavin Smith
- Marco Traniello
- Paul Wasicka
- Lee Watkinson
- Robert Williamson
Jour 1B
- Brandon Cantu
- Miami John Cerntu
- David Chiu
- TJ Cloutier
- Eli Elezra
- Antonio Esfandiari
- Chris Ferguson
- Ted Forrest
- Châu Giang
- Barry Greenstein
- Jennifer Hartmann
- Phil Ivey
- Phil Laak
- Nam Le
- Howard Lederer
- Kathy Liébert
- Jeff Madsen
- Daniel Negreanu
- Hommes Nguyen
- Scotty Nguyen
- Jean Phan
- Jennifer Tilly
- JC Tran
- David Williams
- Jerry Yang