World Poker Tour Bay 101 Report

333 players lined up for the opportunity to be crowned the latest WPT champion, which remains one of the foremost and prestigious poker tournaments around and they always attract a strong field. With a buy-in of $9000 + $500 there was a strong field of online holdem poker players and plenty of big name professionals. The tournament was characterised by a strong run by arguably the greatest No Limit Texas Hold’em tournament player of all time Phil Hellmuth, but it was McLean Karr who won the tournament and walked away with the $878,500 first prize.

For his win McLean Karr wins the WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star, a coveted WPT bracelet, the lovely Bay 101 trophy, and he receives a buy-in into the $25,500 entry WPT World Championship. Karr also managed to collect three bounties, busting Erik Seidel, Greg “FBT” Mueller, and Miami John Cernuto to earn an extra $15,000 and three autographed t-shirts.

The real story of the tournament was Phil Hellmuth who was chip leader throughout the tournament and looked like adding another massive tournament win to his glittering poker CV. The hand where he was knocked out was surprising for two reasons. Firstly, the bad beat itself was very cruel, and secondly, Phil was so shocked to be knocked out he simply stood up and walked away.

Against eventual runner-up Andy Seth, he got all-in with QQ against Seth’s AJ. Everything looked good for Hellmuth until the river, when that nasty Ace hit and eliminated Phil. He definitely felt the pain and silently went away to recover. After leaving the table (still in view of the TV cameras of course) he then crumpled into the fetal position to come to terms with what was certainly a cruel slice of fortune. This led fellow professional Tony G to write an open letter to Phil on his blog expressing concerns about his mental health. Phil won $117,000 for his 6th place finish.

There was a good atmosphere in this tournament with the live reports suggesting that Dan O’Brien bought the audience a round of drinks and one member of the audience shouted soon after, “Win a big pot so you can buy better drinks next time.”

The tournament eventually went heads up between Andy Seth and McLean Karr. Andy has a number of good cashes and, despite being somewhat unknown by the general poker public, he finished runner-up in a WSOP main last summer and won $372,855. The winner of that bracelet (event 24) was Peter Vilandos. UK actor Michael Greco (Beppe in Eastenders) finished in 3rd place in this event. McLean Karr is relatively new to the active poker tournament circuit. He had a couple of cashes for a total of $19,000 in February of 2010 but his win here was his major breakthrough. Standing at 27 out of 27 as the final day started with the 26th placed player holding more than twice the number of chips he had.

In the heads up battle the chip lead went back and forth in a tense battle, but eventually Karr prevailed. He seems very personable and a breath of fresh air and he interviews very well. His friend Mario Ho cheered him on to victory and with $878,500 plus bounties burning a hole in his pocket Karr will be seen again on the circuit I’m sure. Not bad for a player who won a satellite to participate in the WPT!

The final table, which is always six players on the WPT rather than nine or ten as in other tournament, and pay-outs were as follows,

1st: McLean Karr – $878,500
2nd: Andy Seth – $521,200
3rd: Dan O’Brien – $292,800
4th: Hasan Habib – $234,300
5th: Matt Keikoan – $175,700
6th: Phil Hellmuth – $117,000

Check out bwin.com as they offer satellite opportunities to many of the large live poker tournaments where you have the opportunity to do exactly what McLean Karr did and turn something quite small into nearly $1 million dollars!

By Malcolm Clarke

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Tags: andy seth, mclean karr, phil hellmuth, poker tournament, satellites, shooting star, wpt, wpt bay 101