If FBT were a JoBro, which one would he be?

If you ever wondered what it would be like to live in a world in which poker pros are treated the same way preteens treat a Jonas Brothers concert, you may want to travel to San Jose for the World Poker Tour Bay 101 Shooting Star event. The residents of Silicon Valley are fervent poker fans and Monday they were treated to the first day of the WPT event that has long been a favorite of the fans and pros alike.

Yesterday, 136 players turned out for Day 1A of the $10,000 buy-in event, including 17 “Shooting Stars”, poker pros determined before the event with $5,000 bounties on their heads. In addition to paying any player who knocks out a Shooting Star $5,000, the casino also awards a $10,000 prize to the end of Day 1A and Day 1B chip leader. Several of the Shooting Stars hit the rail over the course of Day 1A, including Jennifer Harman, Gus Hansen, TJ Cloutier, Eric Baldwin, Jason Mercier, Chris “Jesus” Ferguson and Tom “durrrr” Dwan.

Several of the bounties did make it through to the end of the day and even thrived. The rail of observers, which was 3-4 people deep all day, were entertained by the assorted table antics of Daniel Negreanu, who shared a table with fellow Shooting Stars Jonathan Little and Yevgeniy Timoshenko for a portion of the day. It was also easy to spot Greg “FBT” Mueller amongst the field, as the former hockey pro donned his bright red Canadian hockey jersey in honor of his home country of Canada’s Olympic hockey gold medal.

Mueller was going for the gold himself, as he was one of the players at the end of the day who was vying for the honor of chip leader. His table had three major contenders for the honor, as Mueller, Vanna Tea and Oddie Dardon were all sitting there with over 100,000 chips apiece. Tea had Mueller outchipped by around 10,000 or so, but Mueller elected to fold his last hand of the night rather than risk his stack to capture the $10,000 prize.

As such, Tea is the Day 1A chip leader with 143,900, while Mueller is second in chips with 132,800. Dardon is the only other player with more than 100,000 chips, having ended the day with 105,500. Of the 136 players who started the day, only 53 will return for Day 2 play on Wednesday. Tuesday marks the start of Day 1B play, when around 200 players are expected to hit the felt and try to claim their piece of the prize pool and maybe even pick up a bounty or two.

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