Bay 101 Shooting Star Championship is Days Away from Long-Awaited Return to WPT

One of the most iconic World Poker Tour (WPT) events in history is less than two weeks away from returning for the first time since COVID.

The $5,300 buy-in WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star Championship at Bay 101 Casino in San Jose, California, will kick off Oct. 24. Additional series events at the popular NorCal card room will start Oct. 17, beginning with the $600 Shooting Star Opener, a no-limit hold’em tournament with two Day 1 starting flights. But the highlight of the series is the event so many WPT grinders have been waiting for since the pre-COVID era.

WPT Back at Bay 101

The Bay 101 Shooting Star Championship is a unique event, in which each starting table will have at least one “Shooting Star,” a player designated as a bounty. Knocking out a Shooting Star is worth $2,500, adding some incentive to a tournament that always attracts a large field.

World Poker Tour staff chooses the Shooting Stars before the tournament begins, and they seek out players who are well-known or have some personality.

This year’s list of Shooting Stars includes Lily Kiletto, Xuan Liu, Kenna James, poker boom crusher Erick Lindgren, Chip Leader Coaching founder Chance Kornuth, content creator Nikki Limo, old-school grinder Greg “FBT” Mueller, 2025 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event final tablist Adam Hendrix, WPT champions Matt Salsberg and David “ODB” Baker, PokerGO commentator Jeff Platt, the player responsible for the biggest controversy at the 2025 WSOP, Jesse Yaginuma, among others.

The list of bounties features some WPT Champions Club members, WSOP champions, high-stakes crushers, talented content creators, and some of the top pros in the early days of the World Poker Tour.

The WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star Championship was one of the circle-your-calendar major events on the WPT schedule each year before the pandemic. Phil Gordon, a retired poker pro who was a prominent figure on televised poker games in the 2000s, was the first Bay 101 Shooting Star champion in 2004. He won the tournament for $360,000, defeating Chris Moneymaker heads-up just months after Moneymaker famously won the 2003 WSOP Main Event.

Ted Forrest (2007), Brandon Cantu (2008), and Stefan Schillhabel (2016) are among the past champions.

Bay 101 Casino has hosted 15 WPT events, providing many memorable moments, with more to come later this month. This year’s tournament runs from Oct. 24 to 28.

WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star Schedule

_{*Photos courtesy WPT}