/ Matthew Pitt / 08 March 2012 / Leave a Comment 
Scott Baumstein (Photo: WPT / Francesco Rizzo)
Baumsteim, like his fellow Americans, lost his right to play online poker in the aftermath of Black Friday and was forced to turn his attention to live poker and so far it seems to be working out more than okay for him
One of the most popular stops on the World Poker Tour is without a shadow of a doubt the Bay 101 Shooting Stars Main Event in San Jose. The tournament is always one of the best attended each season, which means it has some huge prizes on offer but its unique format makes it fun and exciting to both watch and participate in.
Each year a number of prominent poker players are selected to become Shooting Stars for the duration of the event and each of these so-called Shooting Stars has a $5,000 bounty placed on their head. Whoever eliminates a Shooting Stars picks up their $5,000 bounty and a personalised T-shirt. It is all good fun and has always been received well. Along with these bounties the chip leaders from Day 1a and Day 1b also receive a $10,000 bonus which means it can be quite a profitable trip even if a player does not make it into the money.
Yesterday saw 149 players and 19 shooting stars return to their seats in the Bay 101 Casino in San Jose, California for Day 2 of the Main Event and by the time the tournament director Matt Savage called time on proceedings only 20 players has chips to bag up, amongst them just two Shooting Stars. They were JC Tran who bagged and tagged 145,000 and former World Series of Poker Main Event champion Jonathan Duhamel who ended the day with a much healthier looking stack of 751,000 chips. However, both bounty-laden players were massively outchipped by Scott Baumstein who will start Day 3 later today armed with little ceramic discs worth 1,301,000.
Who wants to be a millionaire
Baumstein was one of only three players to end the Day 2 with more than one millions chips, the others being Andrew Badecker (1,106,000) and Moon Kim (1,016,000), and he is now in pole position to take down this tournament. Baumstein may not be a household name just yet but he is an extremely talented poker player indeed and it is only a matter of time before he becomes better known in the live poker world; maybe this could be his springboard to stardom?
The American is a high-stakes heads-up sit 'n' go specialist and like some of his peers, Olivier Busquet springs to mind, he has been able to transfer his online skills into the live arena. Baumsteim, like his fellow Americans, lost his right to play online poker in the aftermath of Black Friday and was forced to turn his attention to live poker and so far it seems to be working out more than okay for him. In 2011 he cashed twice at the World Series of Poker including reaching the final table of the $5,000 Shootout event, he also finished fourth at WPT Amneville where he busted out in fourth place and in November he won a star-studded €10,000 buy-in High Roller event at the Amsterdam Masters for a career best score of €129,500. In total Baumstein has won just under $745,000 from live poker tournaments but that amount will be dwarfed if he goes all the way in this event as there is $960,900 awaiting the eventual winner, plus the possibility of two $5,000 bounties of course.
Standing between Baumstein and the win are the aforementioned players but also a sprinkling of talented and famous players including WSOPE bracelet winner Erik Cajelais, former WPT champion Taylor von Kriegenbergh and WSOP bracelet winner Amir Lehavot. Play resumes at 12:00 Pacific Time (20:00GMT) and we believe the plan is to play down to the six-handed final table. At which point each player will be guaranteed $128,200 and will be just five eliminations away from becoming a World Poker Tour champion.
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