Belgium's Joris Springael holds the chip lead with 1,477,000. The talented and dangerous Vivek Rajkumar sits not too far behind in a quest for his second consecutive WPT final table, having just finished runner-up at the L.A. Poker Classic last month.
Still in contention are Day 1 chip leader and son of late Bay 101 founder Marko Trapani, Chris Trapani, PokerStars Caribbean Adventure winner Galen Hall and EPT Berlin champ Kevin MacPhee.
John Juanda was the last player to bust on the day, while Layne Flack was the unfortunate money bubble boy, returning home with three $5k bounties, but no cash.
They will play down to the six-handed final table Thursday and crown a champion Friday.
All remaining 24 players in the $10,000 buy-in NLHE main event have the $1,039,000 first place prize, from the $3,942,500 prize pool, firmly in mind.
Final 24 player standings:
1. Joris Springael – 1,477,000
2. Alan Sternberg – 1,106,000
3. Vivek “Psyduck” Rajkumar – 1,076,000
4. Casey McCarrel – 874,000
5. Brian Schmidt – 842,000
6. Andrew Weisner – 755,000
7. Dan Smith – 703,000
8. Steven Kelly – 653,000
9. Kevin “ImaLuckSac” MacPhee – 542,000
10. Mark Dickstein – 477,000
11. Ty “puffinmypurp” Reiman – 450,000
12. Galen Hall – 429,000
13. Mike Sexton – 361,000
14. Mike Matusow – 352,000
15. Kathy Leibert – 351,000
16. Chris Trapani – 330,000
17. Eric “blizair” Blair – 297,000
18. Noah Lathrop – 291,000
19. Zach “CrazyZachary” Clark – 238,000
20. Ben Hamnett – 220,000
21. Danny Nguyen – 211,000
22. Brandon Crawford – 203,000
23. Brian Park – 128,000
24. Edmond Genoves – 98,000
The Shooting Star event draws crowds each year because of the unique $5k bounty placed on the heads of the celebrity poker pros. The pros sign customized t-shirts with their photo when they bust, along with the bounty. The fans, both in the field and watching from the rail get a big kick of seeing all the poker celebrities.
