The World Poker Tour (WPT) bestbet Bounty Scramble $5,000 buy-in Main Event begins this weekend and, if you read the words that came before this one, you likely saw the word “bounty” in the title of the event. As a follow-up, I bet you are curious who the bounties in the tournament will be. You’re are in luck – you don’t have to go hunting for that information because we have it for you right here, on this very website that you stumbled upon today.
The announced bounties for the upcoming WPT bestbet Bounty Scramble in Jacksonville, Florida are:
James Calderaro
Tyler Patterson
Richard Seymour
Eric “Barstool Nate” Nathan
Loni Harwood
Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi
Nabil “Doc” Hierzi
Mike Sexton
Allison Hollander
Matt Affleck
Jessica Dawley
Darren Elias
John Hesp
Sam Soverel
Shannon Shorr
Anthony Zinno
Byron Kaverman
Esther Taylor Brady
Noah Schwartz
Matt Stout
Ebony Kenney
Matt Savage
Marvin Rettenmaier
Sean Winter
Chance Cornuth
Ari Engel
Tom Marchese
Ryan Riess
The bounties will work like they generally do in other tournaments. Any player who eliminates one of the players marked as a bounty (it’s certainly possible that there may be other bounties not on the list above) will receive $2,500. Thus, there will be a whole bunch of players who will be playing in the Main Event for half of the buy-in. There is no limit to number of bounty awards a player can win, so it is fully possible to freeroll or even profit without even “making the money.”
The chip leaders at the end of Days 1A and 1B will also win a $5,000 prize. The money for the bounties and the chip leaders prizes will be taken out of the prize pool, which doesn’t sound wonderful, but I don’t think we should expect the casino or the WPT to just put up all that extra money. The Main Event has a $1 million guaranteed prize pool, anyway.
It is nice to see the bestbet Bounty Scramble on the schedule, since one of the most popular events on the poker calendar every year, the WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star, has been eliminated this season (can we at least get a bounty from the knockout?). Players flocked to Bay 101 for the tournament and it was arguably the most pure fun people had playing big ticket tournament poker. The players who were designated as bounties got to wear medals at the tables and they would autograph a t-shirt with their face on it for the player who took all their chips. Todd Brunson was famous for his expletive-laced diatribes that took up both sides of the shirt. Being named a bounty target – a “shooting star” at the Bay 101 was an honor and almost all stars had a great attitude and sense of humor about it.
In an interview with my colleague Earl Burton, WPT Executive Director Matt Savage said that “It was mutually agreed upon between officials on both sides that the Bay 101 would not be a part of the Season XVI World Poker Tour schedule.”
