Live tournament update brings you all the news from the starting flights of the World Poker Tour (WPT) Venice Carnival and Bay 101 Shooting Stars event in California.
The WPT are the only live tournament outfit that host simultaneous events in different quarters of the globe and this week we bring you action from the Gioco Digitale WPT Venice Carnival and WPT Bay 101 Shooting Stars Event in San Jose, California.
First to Venice and it was a cozy little field of 51 players who filled the main tournament hall in the grand old Casino Di Venezia in the heart of one of the most serene cities in the world.
Of those 51 players 37 made it through to Day 2 and the Russian Tigran Yazychyan managed to more than hold his own on a table containing Liv Boeree, Steve Watts and Andrea Dato to take the chip lead with 91,525 chips.
The event attracted two former WPT Champions in the shape of Season XII Prague winner Julian Thomas and the reigning WPT Venice champion Rocco Palumbo.
Thomas would exit early at the hands of the impressive Sotirious Koutoupas. The recent winner of the main event at the European Poker Tour (EPT) Deauville led the field for most of the day before the Russian finally caught him.
Sharing that table with Koutoupas was Palumbo and he rarely poked his head above starting stack and finished the day with 24,000 chips and a lot of work to do if he is going to repeat the success of last year.
Other notables through to Day 2 included the likes of William Dorey (81,475), Andrea Dato (69,875), Sergio Castelluccio (56,300), Sotirious Koutoupas (50,150), Steve Watts (46,000), Georgious Karakousis (43,700) and Liv Boeree (22,000).
The News From The Shooting Stars
312 players made Day 1A of the Bay 101 Shooting Stars their home for the day, and 29 Shooting Stars each with bounties on their head worth $2,500 and an autographed custom t-shirt, were amongst that crowd.
The chosen few were Todd Brunson, David Chiu, Jonathan Duhamel, Tony Dunst, Antonio Esfandiari, Jay Farber, Joseph Hachem, Loni Harwood, Phil Hellmuth, Blair Hinkle, Faraz Jaka, John Juanda, Kyle Julius, Eugene Katchalov, Jason Koon, Phil Laak, Nam Le, Mike Matusow, Daniel Negreanu, Dominik Nitsche, Brian Rast, Marvin Rettenmaier, Matthew Salsberg, Noah Schwartz, Erik Seidel, Mike Sexton, Jennifer Tilly, J.C. Tran and Paul Volpe.
By the time the tournament had ended there were 117 players left in the field and only 12 of the 29 Shooting Stars had survived the added attention that those markers attract.
David Chiu (174,000), Jason Koon (149,600), Dominik Nitsche (128,000), Matthew Salsberg (109,200), Jonathan Duhamel (106,700), Marvin Rettenmaier (103,400), Antonio Esfandiari (85,000), Brian Rast (77,900), Loni Harwood (65,000), Faraz Jaka (59,200), Blair Hinkle (43,300) and Eugene Katchalov (24,500) all made it through the day.
The chip leader was Giorgo Medici who ended the day with 254,600 chips and that honor carried with it a $10,000 prize. Hai Tran (253,500), David Foster (225,200), Bryan Campenallo (210,000) and Mukul Pahuja (189,100) were also at the right end of the chip counts.
