A favorite stop for years on the WPT, the Bay 101 Shooting Star offers a $10k bonus for being a Day 1a or Day 1b chip leader plus $5k bounties for knocking out specific pros and Yockey took full advantage today in San Jose.
An experienced live pro with just shy of a half million in career earnings, Yockey used a big hand with quads over a full house to bag up 245k in chips to end the night as the outright chip leader.
As an added bonus, Yockey also knocked out Shooting Star Erik Seidel to claim his $5k bounty and a profit on the tournament before the money has even been reached.
Close behind Yockey in the chip counts after Day 1a are veteran tourney pros Brandon Wong (195k) and Shannon Shorr (183k), who both narrowly missed out on the bonus but will start Day 2 on Wednesday near the top of the pack.
Amir Khaziri (187k) and David Peters (142k) round out the top five through 10 levels of play.
Just Five Shooting Stars Make it Through Day 1a
Of the 142 players who started Day 1a, just 54 made it through.
And of the 21 Shooting Stars that played, just five survived - Vanessa Selbst, Jonathan Duhamel, Christian Harder, Mike Matusow and Kathy Liebert.
The chip leader of that group is Selbst, who despite an early hit to her stack when she folded a full house to a suspected straight flush rebounded to finish the day with 125k in chips and a top 10 stack.
Duhamel and Harder were right behind with 100k+ stacks each while Matusow managed to hold on to about 83k. Liebert finished around 60k.
Among the Shooting Stars to bust today and hand out signed shirts to go along with their bounties were Phil Hellmuth, Daniel Negreanu, Liv Boeree, Maria Ho, Joe Hachem, Erik Seidel, Andy Frankenberger, Dwyte Pilgrim, Faraz Jaka and Yevgeniy Timoshenko
Another 28 more Shooting Stars will be on the tables along with the rest of the field when action resumes from Bay 101 tomorrow at 10:45 am.
Follow the Day 1b action on the WPT Live Updates page or catch the live stream from the feature table here.
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