The trip to San Jose for the Bay101 Shooting Star World Poker Tour event will be a new stop for PocketFivesLive. Last year scheduling conflicts prevented coverage of the tournament, which saw four known pros go to the final table in the unique format used at Bay101. Each table starts with a “shooting star” and that person has a $5,000 bounty on their head going to the player that eliminates them. <READMORE> While most of the players that have a bounty on their head are the more known live players, the added value is there for the rest of the field as they are able to take down the name pros.In the 2007 event Ted Forrest took the title, defeating JJ Liu heads up at a final table that also included Bill Edler and James Van Alstyne. Ted and JJ will both be back as shooting star this year and the $5k bounty to the person that eliminates them.
Matt Savage is respected as one of the best tournament directors in the world, and one of the tournaments he regularly runs is the Bay101 Shooting Star event. Matt adds his personal flair to the tournaments and always has a very well run event. Savage was the tournament director for the Aruba tournament this year and those that were around in Aruba will remember the 6-handed play starting when the field was down to 36 players.
This is a common feature at tournaments ran by Savage and will be in place at Bay101 again this year. Many players like the 6 handed play, especially at the crucial end stages of the tournament. Last year Joe Sebok and Jeff Madsen seemed to benefit from 6 handed play all the way down from 36 to the final 9, but then both players saw what looked like an almost assured final table finish fall just a little short with 7th and 8th place finishes respectively.
Tim “Tmay420” West was just coming off a final table finish in the WPT Celebrity Invitational last year and followed it up with a 13th place finish at Bay101. Peter “Nordberg” Feldman also cashed, finishing in 39th place.
The first day of action for Bay101 kicks off on Monday March 10th and players will play down to the final table of 6 over the next few days until final table play is recorded on Friday March 14th. PocketFivesLive.com coverage will be brought to you by PokerStars.
If you are playing in the event you can sign up for coverage on PocketFivesLive Here.
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