Both starting flights of the 2015 World Poker Tour (WPT) Bay 101 Shooting Star Main Event are in the books as Day 1B wrapped up last night. Haixia Zhang ended up bagging the most chips at the end of the day, collecting 281,000. 389 players entered Tuesday’s action, making it an even 700 for the entire tournament, while just 155 advanced to Wednesday’s Day 2, joining the 106 from Day 1A.
The field could grow slightly before play opens on Wednesday as registration is still open, so there is a chance that last year’s record field of 718 could be eclipsed. We won’t know the total prize pool and payout schedule until registration closes, but first place will likely pay over a million dollars and something like the top 72 players will get paid.
Zhang, the chip leader, does not have much of a live tournament resume, but if her name sounds familiar, it is because she just won the World Series of Poker Ladies Championship in 2014, cashing in for more than $150,000.
One of her bigger hands of the day came very late. WPT.com doesn’t have information on how large the pot was, except that it contained a “sizable amount of chips,” but on the river, Shooting Star Dan Shak was all-in for his last 40,000 chips and Zhang called. Shak had flopped a broadway straight with A-Q, but the board of K-J-T-2-J gave Zhang and her J-T a full house, easily giving her the pot and Shak’s $2,500 bounty. She had also won Jeff Madsen’s bounty earlier.
31 players who were marked as Shooting Stars played on Day 1B, though that doesn’t mean that Day 1B was necessarily overweighted with Shooting Stars compared to Day 1A when there were 52 Shooting Stars in total. Because this is a single re-entry event, Shooting Stars who were knocked out on Monday could try again on Tuesday. Some Shooting Stars who fired a second bullet were Scott Seiver, Daniel Negreanu, Anthony Zinno, Antonio Esfandiari, and Noah Schwartz.
Day 2 has already begun at Bay 101 in San Jose, California as the march to the money continues.
2015 World Poker Tour Bay 101 Shooting Star Main Event – Day 1B Chip Leaders
1. Haixia Zhang – 281,000
2. Chance Kornuth – 235,100
3. Ron Lewis – 234,600
4. Michael Loncar – 221,000
5. Mark Dube – 197,500
6. Dan O’Brien – 181,600
7. Carlos Mortensen – 178,800
8. Jesse Rockowitz – 178,000
9. Kevin Mathers – 172,100
10. Mike Leah – 165,300
2015 World Poker Tour Bay 101 Shooting Star Main Event – Combined Day 1 Chip Leaders
1. James Carroll – 297,600
2. Ravee Mathi – 282,000
3. Haixia Zhang – 281,000
4. David Miscikowski – 253,900
5. John Hennigan – 248,700
6. Brian Rast – 237,000
7. Chance Kornuth – 235,100
8. Ron Lewis – 234,600
9. Justin Young – 224,300
10. Michael Loncar – 221,000
