The World Poker Tour’s Bay 101 Shooting Stars event is down to it’s final 20 players, and the play to this point has been incredibly exciting all around. When the day began there were 149 players remaining, and 19 Shooting Stars left in the event as well. The 19 Shooting Stars all had $5k bounties on them, so whoever sent them home would pick up a nice bonus. To start the action Bryce Yockey was atop the leader board, but he was unable to make it through as one of the final 20 players remaining.
Pretty early in the day we had two of the Shooting Stars going heads up against each other as Jonathan Duhamel sent Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier home to pick up his own $5k prize. Grospellier shoved over the top of Duhamel’s pre-flop raised for 12k, and Duhamel made the call. Duhamel held pocket treys, while ElkY had A-Q, but the pocket threes held and sent ElkY home early on. Another interesting match-up that we had was when Jonathan Little sent Mike Matusow home, and Mike McClain knocked off Scott Seiver.
When the action was down to the final 37 players it took about an hour for the money bubble to burst. When it happened, it was actually two Shooting Stars who went head to head in Men Nguyen and Kathy Liebert. Liebert shoved over top of Nguyen, who said that if it was for less than 100k, that he would call. It was 92k and Nguyen called and turned over the A-10 of clubs. Liebert had A-K, but the flop came down with 10-9-8 with two clubs as well. The turn hit another club sending Liebert home on the bubble, and sent a $5k bounty to Nguyen.
A few other players who were knocked out before the end of the day included Allen Cunningham, Men Nguyen, Jason Mercier (by Jason Duhamel), Linda Johnson, and Fabrice Soulier.
Duhamel found himself sitting in 6th place at the end of the day with 751k, only about 600k behind the overall leader. He is also playing this event for free now, after knocking out two of the Shooting Stars and taking home $10k in bounties. There is only one other Shooting Star remaining in the event outside of Duhamel, and that is J.C. Tran.