March 06 2012, Brett Collson

The World Poker Tour Bay 101 Shooting Star Main Event got under way in San Jose, Calif., with the first of two Day 1 flights on Monday. The $10,000 buy-in event is one of the more popular stops on the circuit each year because of its unique format. Every starting table on Day 1 begins with a notable “Shooting Star,” and anyone who eliminates that player will receive a $5,000 bounty as well as an autographed t-shirt.

The day began with 142 players, and only 54 survived after 10 levels of play. Several bounties were awarded on Monday as only five of the 19 Shooting Stars advanced to Day 2. Among the bounty players sent to the rail were Daniel Negreanu, Phil Hellmuth, Liv Boeree, Joe Hachem, Dywte Pilgrim, Maria Ho, Will Failla, Erik Seidel and Faraz Jaka.

Pilgrim was the first bounty to hit the rail when his flopped set of fours finished second best to Dzung Nguyen’s set of kings. Nearly nine hours later, Jaka was the last Shooting Star eliminated. On the final hand of the night, Jaka was all in preflop with against Brandon Wong’s , and the board gave no help to the WPT Season 8 Player of the Year.

Bryce Yockey collected the $5,000 bounty for eliminating Erik Seidel and also received the $10,000 prize for finishing the day atop the chip counts. According to the WPT Live Updates team, Yockey won a flip with against Seidel’s to send the Hall of Famer packing, and then moments later he made quads to claim the chip lead. On a board of , Yockey three-bet shoved with and Paul McCaffrey called, sending his entire stack over to Yockey on one the final hands of the night.

Yockey holds a sizeable lead with 245,300 going into Day 2, which will commence on Wednesday. Wong (195,600), Amir Khaziri (187,700), Shannon Shorr (183,400) and David Peters (142,100) also finished Day 1a with big stacks.

Only five Shooting Stars survived on Monday, but all are in good shape heading into Day 2. Vanessa Selbst (124,500), Christian Harder (107,700), Jonathan Duhamel (102,200), and Mike Matusow (83,800) are all above the average stack of 78,888, and Kathy Liebert finished with 61,500. Liebert added some much-needed chips to her stack when she knocked out fellow Shooting Star Sam Stein during the final level of the day.

Here’s a look at some of the notable stacks after Day 1a of the World Poker Tour Bay 101 Shooting Star Main Event:

Around 30 more Shooting Stars will hit the felt on Day 1b, including Scotty Nguyen, Barry Greenstein, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, Men “The Master” Nguyen, Allen Cunningham, defending champ Alan Sternberg, and WPT commentator Mike Sexton, who finished sixth in this event last year.

Day 1b begins Tuesday at 1045 PST (1845 GMT). Check back in to PokerNews.com for daily recaps from Bay 101.

*Photo courtesy of the World Poker Tour.

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March 06 2012, PokerNews Staff

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