Introductions
by Court on 03.17.09, 4:33 pm
There are 25 players in the field today designated as Shooting Stars, each carrying a $5k bounty on their head that will go to the player that eliminates them from the tournament. In the first few levels of the day each of the Shooting Star players is introduced with a rundown of their poker accomplishments. Going through all 25 stars in the field today took most of a level of play, but none of the players seemed to be disturbed by the constant chatter over the PA system. The fans gave roaring rounds of applause as each players name was divulged after the buildup of all the accomplishments. Daniel Negreanu is always a favorite and drew one of the larger rounds of applause from the crowd, along with raucous cheers for local favorites Barry “barryg1″ Greenstein and Antonio Esfandiari.
Along with the bounty players at each table, there are some other interesting matchups as well. Table 20 is host to Chris “cdbr3799″ Dombrowski, Isaac “Mr. Menlo” Baron, Yevginey “Atimos” Timoshenko and Marco “CrazyMarco” Johnson. Over at a table right along the rail, Kevin “BeL0WaB0Ve” Saul and Adam “Roothlus” Levy are surrounded by the intense fans here at San Jose and over at his table in the middle of the room Jonathan “FatalError” Aguiar (right) has already mixed it up with Steve Sung. The preflop action looked like Sung limped from early position and then when Aguiar raised Sung reraised to 1,150. Aguiar called and on the K
J4 flop both checked. Steve led at the 6
turn for 1,600 and was called and on the J river Sung again bet, this time 3,500. Aguiar made the call and Sung rolled over his A
A
. Aguiar mucked, flashing AK with the A.
Mohsin “ChicagoCrads1″ Charania was not thrilled with the 10:45 AM start and after losing 3k chips early on probably wished he had chosen to miss more of the first level, but has settled in now. He has Jason “JP_OSU” Potter on his immediate left.
Even with all the quirks of Bay 101; bounties, prizes for end of day chip leaders, etc… early play in a tournament is still pretty much the same. The players are feeling each other out with most pots being small. Big hands run into each other every now and then moving some chips around and eliminating a player here and there but for the most part the action is fairly calm.
Shooting Stars Jennifer Tilly and Nenad Medic have already been eliminated from the tournament though, and as the day progresses there will be many more that join them on the sidelines.
