The first day of play at the World Poker Tour Bay 101 Shooting Star tournament, attracted 136 players and countless poker fans to the tables in San Jose, California.

Among them were about 17 official “Shooting Stars” with $5,000 bounties on each of their heads, set to be rewarded to whichever player was lucky enough to knock one of the Stars out. 

As could be expected with that kind of  incentive, most of those bountied players were already eliminated during the first Day 1 but some, like Daniel Negreanu, Mike Matusow, Freddy Deeb and Yevgeniy Timoshenko, were able to hold on to their chips and their bounties for at least another day.

Some of the bountied players already eliminated include PokerRoad’s Gavin Smith, Kathy Liebert, Hoyt Corkins, Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, Gus Hansen and Tom “durrrr” Dwan.

The first exciting day of play saw the Day 1a field more than cut in half, however there are still numerous interesting players- both bountied and non- who were able to accumulate enough chips to end the night with a real shot at going deep in this year’s tournament.  Some of those players with serious stacks include Jonathan Little, Scott Montgomery, Greg “FBT Mueller and Vanna Tea, the chip leader at the end of the day and recipient of the $10,000 Day 1 chip leader bonus.

For more information on the WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star event visit www.worldpokertour.com, for excellent live updates, photos, videos and chip counts.