WPT: Eugene Katchalov Leads Day 1B Field

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WPT: Eugene Katchalov Leads Day 1B Field

Jessica Welman | March 10, 2010

Tuesday marked the second starting day of the World Poker Tour (WPT) Bay 101 Shooting Star tournament, where an additional 196 players took part in the unique event. Of those 196 players, 25 were Shooting Star bounties, who had to focus not only on chipping up in the tournament, but also protecting the $5,000 bounty on their head. Several of those Shooting Stars, like Carlos Mortensen, Antonio Esfandiari, Vivek Rajkumar, Chris Moore, Men Nguyen and Joe Sebok, were felted by one of the bounty hunters in the field on Day 1, while others, like Scotty Nguyen, JC Tran and Nick Schulman, thrived.

Nguyen had the best showing of all of the Day 1B Shooting Stars, finishing the day with 99,900 chips. That was enough to put him in the top ten chip counts headed into Day 2, but it was not enough to earn the title of end of day chip leader. That honor went to Eugene Katchalov, who ended the day with 131,500 and claimed the $10,000 prize for finishing on top.

A grand total of 333 players took part in this year’s event, generating a prize pool in excess of $3 million and a first place prize of $878,500. On Wednesday, the remaining 126 players will play down to the final 36, all of whom will make the money in the event. The top ten chip counts headed into Day 2 are populated with notable names from the online and live poker worlds, including Greg “FBT” Mueller, David “Doc Sands” Sands and Yevgeniy “Jovial Gent” Timoshenko.

Here are the top ten chip counts headed into Day 2:

1st: Vanna Tea - 143,900
2nd: Greg “FBT” Mueller - 132,800
3rd: Eugene Katchalov - 131,500
4th: Timothy McDermott - 118,100
5th: Grant Hillman - 115,100
6th: David Sands - 106,900
7th: Oddie Dardon - 105,500
8th: Scotty Nguyen - 99,000
9th: Sorel Mizzi - 97,600
9th: Yevgeniy Timoshenko - 97,600

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