Bay 101 Poker Classic -- WPT Season 7

Day 1A

The Bay 101 Poker Classic is one of the hottest stops on the WPT tournament circuit. This event is always exciting because of the "Shooting Star Bounty" that will be placed on the heads of 50 top players. If one of these particular players are busted out of the tournament, the winner will receive $5,000. And yes you can earn multiple bounties which has been done before. Plus the chip leaders for Days 1A and 1B will receive an extra $10,000 bonus! On both halves of Day 1, there will be 10 - 60 minute levels that will be played. All players will start with 20,000 in chips. Day 1A had 136 entrants in it.

The action got underway quickly as Joe Sebok doubled up with quad Jacks from an opponent who turned his pocket Queens into a full house with Q's/5's. (The board showed J 5 5 Q J, and Sebok had pocket J's.) Seen at the tables were Allen Cunningham, Jamie Gold, Annie Duke, Mike Matusow, David Pham, David Singer, Lee Watkinson, Kathy Liebert, Andy Bloch, Hoyt Corkins, Robert Williamson III, Erick Lindgren and Gavin Smith. And that is just to name a few for Day 1A!

Andy Bloch was the first to have a bounty collected on as his pocket K's met up with another player holding pocket A's. David Singer also lost his bounty as an all-in move with pocket 10's met with the pocket A's of Shawn Buchanan. The list of the fallen grew as Layne Flack, John Juanda, Phil Hellmuth Jr., Mike Matusow, Erik Seidel, Jerry Yang and Lee Watkinson were busted out of the event. Each of the following carried a $5,000 bounty that was won by a few happy players.

The end of Day 1A saw 51 remaining out of a field of 136, and Hoang Nguyen received a $10,000 bonus for being the chip leader.

1. Hoang Nguyen -- 193,800
2. David Pham -- 160,600
3. Conner Stokkett -- 124,500
4. Jonathan Little -- 121,300
5. Matt Lessinger -- 107,700
6. Faraz Jaka -- 95,600

Day 1B

In the field on Day 1B were Hevad Khan, Daniel Negreanu, Phil Laak, T.J. Cloutier, Chris Ferguson, Chau Giang, Phil Ivey, Nam Le, Howard Lederer, Scotty Nguyen, Jennifer Tilly, Jeff Madsen, David Williams and J.C. Tran. Poor Jennifer Tilly was among the first to bust as her pocket A's lost to Vivek Rajkumar with pocket 5's who made another 5 on the river. She was followed by Nenad Medic, Ted Forrest, Antonio Esfandiari, David Williams, David Chiu, Scotty Nguyen and Barry Greenstein. What made it more interesting is that all the above mentioned had $5,000 bounties on their heads!

A total of 94 players were remaining from Day 1B and means that 145 will come back on Day 2. Plus a happy Issac Baron took an extra 10 grand home for being the chip leader.

1. Issac Baron -- 153,700
2. Vivek Rajkumar -- 137,500
3. Danny Kim -- 131,400
4. Luis Velador -- 129,400
5. Gary Tighe -- 114,600
6. John Monnette -- 103,600

1. $1,025,500
2. $550,000
3. $291,500
4. $230,000
5. $180,000
6. $135,000

Day 2

The goal is to play down to 36 players from the 145 that survived 1A and 1B. At this point there are still 20 $5,000 bounties to be collected from top players that get knocked out of the tournament. The first bounty to be collected was Erick Lindgren when his all in with pocket A's was overcome by the set of Kings made by Dan O'Brian. Dan got the 3rd King on the flop. Jennifer Harman was also sent to the sidelines courtesy of Paul Wasicka. She was followed by Men "The Master" Nguyen, Dan Heimiller, Steve Sung, Maria Ho, Allen Cunningham, Gavin Smith, Chad Batista, David "The Dragon" Pham, Annie Duke, Eli Elezra and Freddy Deeb.

But someones loss is anothers gain. Some names of those who made the cut for Day 3 were Vivek Rajkumar with 124,000 chips, Hoyt Corkins 124,000, Joe Sebok 116,500, Steve Brecher 151,500 and Kathy Liebert who ended up 7th in chips with 385,000 in her stack. Here are the top 6 with chip counts:

1. Michael Kamran -- 570,000 chips
2. Tony Behari -- 548,000 chips
3. Chris Moore -- 539,500 chips
4. Daniel O'Brien -- 478,000 chips
5. John Monnette -- 459,000 chips
6. Tyler Cornell -- 425,000 chips

Day 3

Today's round will determine who will make the cut for the televised final table. The cards went into the air a little after noon with the final table players being named just after 8:00 pm. Hoyt Corkins went to the rail in 21st place after meeting the Jack high straight of Vikaly Yarkov. Joe Sebok left in 25th place after his pocket 9's ran into the pocket Q's of Farzad Bonyadi. Bonyadi who had built a huge pile of chips, (over 1 million), lost big time when his all-in move with pocket K's met up with the pocket A's of Steve Brecher resulting in Bonyadi falling to less than 160,000 chips. But Bonyadi did survive long enough to leave in 9th place and a $60,000 payday for his efforts.

After two more busts, the only player with a bounty on their head was Kathy Liebert. And with over 1 million in her stack, they will have to work hard to get the 5 grand on her. Here are the final table participants:

1. Tony Behari -- 2,046,000 chips
2. Steve Brecher -- 2,016,000 chips
3. Chris Moore -- 1,476,000 chips
4. Kathy Liebert -- 1,180,000 chips
5. Thao Le -- 711,000 chips
6. Chau Vu -- 352,000 chips

Final Table
Play began at level 22 with blinds at 6,000/12,000 and ante at $2,000. Fifteen minutes into play, Chau Vu finished in 6th place after his pre flop all in move with A 8 met the pocket 8's of Tony Behari. The table showed K J 10 9 3 helping neither player and giving the victory to Tony. Ten minutes later Thao Le took his chances on the turn with pocket Q's only to meet the pocket A's of Kathy Liebert. Thao took home $180,000 for a 5th place finish. From that point on, Liebert was on fire and it seemed she could not lose, winning the big pots and increasing her stack by hundreds of thousands. Her next victim was Tony Behari who moved all in from the small blind with K 8 suited, and met the pocket 10's of Liebert. None of the cards dealt helped anyone and Tony took home almost a quarter of a million dollars for 4th place while Liebert's stack grew to over 4.5 million.

In the next few hands Chris Moore won a huge pot from Kathy, big enough to knock her stack down to just under 900,000. Unfortunately for Kathy, Chris lost it all in a showdown with Steve Brecher where his A K lost out to the King high diamonds flush made by Brecher resulting in a 3rd place finish for Chris.

The heads up began at level 28 which had blinds at 25/50,000 with a 5,000 ante. Kathy had 2,280,000 chips verses Steve with 5,540,000 on his side. Kathy moved in hard and played big...only to lose large amounts of chips in the process. On the deciding hand, both players went all-in pre flop. Kathy turned over Q 10 of spades and Steve had A 9. The table showed 6 6 2 2 4, giving Steve the win with an Ace high hand. This was Steve's first WPT title ever, but according to him it won't be his last!

1. Steve Brecher -- $1,025,500
2. Kathy Liebert -- $550,000
3. Chris Moore -- $291,500
4. Tony Behari -- $230,000
5. Thao Le -- $180,000
6. Chau Vu -- $135,000