WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star Championship Reaches December Final with Chance Kornuth in Contention 

Six players remain in the $5,300-entry WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star Championship, with just one former winner among them. With Chance Kornuth hoping to get his name on the WPT Mike Sexton Champions Cup again, he will have to come from fourth place in the chasing pack to topple a dominant chip leader.

A Huge Turnout in Cali

California is, in some ways, the rich cousin of Las Vegas and its neon excess. While Sin City welcomes poker players in their millions year-round to the capital of the gambling world, California is often in the background, unable to truly muster up enough attendees to create the parties that it is so used to hosting in Hollywood. Poker in California is, however, always top class. The state is packed with talented players, not least the 17-time WSOP bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth, who resides in The Golden State.

This week, the World Poker Tour hosted one of its most popular stops on its tour and California’s biggest event in 2025 – the Bay 101 Shooting Star Championship. Each former WPT champion has a $2,500 bounty on their head which goes directly to the person who knocks them out. The $5,300 buy-in event featured plenty of stars this year, including Chance Kornuth, Matt Salsberg and Faraz Jaka. Of those three, two clashed to provoke bounty exit while another survives to the final.

It was late in the day on the penultimate day of competition in the event that Faraz Jaka took on the former World Poker Tour Player of the Year Matt Salsberg, as all the chips went in and Jaka was at risk. Salsberg landed the knockout blow and reacted with glee (picture below) as he eliminated his friend away from the table and foe at the felt Jaka. Salsberg himself would exit soon afterwards, however, leaving just Kornuth in the race to become a two-time WPT Main Event winner.

Kornuth Chasing the Big Dog

While six lucky players have reached the televised WPT Shooting Star finale, they’ll have to wait almost two months before traveling to Las Vegas, Nevada, to play down to a winner. Taking place on December 19, the WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star Championship will see just six players from 672 total entries have the chance at getting their name etched onto the WPT Mike Sexton Champions Cup, Chance Kornuth being the only one hoping to do that for the second time.

As the final table begins on December 19, it will be Kharlin Sued who holds the chip lead and a big one it is too. Stacking up over 11 million chips, Sued will be many bettors favorite when the cards go into the air. He obtained that in no small part due to a massive hand where both he and Yuefan Wang had full houses, only with Sued’s being superior.

Kornuth will begin with just 4,265,000 chips behind both Alfie Poetra from Indonesia on 6,895,000 and Kornuth’s fellow American Dan Maor on 4,875,000. No-one else will adapt to the change of surroundings from the Bay 101 Casino in San Jose, California to Las Vegas, where The Wynn Las Vegas will host the action.

What Will the Winner Receive?

With a massive $3.25 million prize pool, the top prize of $480,700 includes a $10,400 seat into the season-ending WPT World Championship this December. Taking place at the same location of the Wynn as this finale, the WPT World Championships festival is the jewel in the crown of the World Poker Tour and goes head-to-head with the WSOP Paradise festival in The Bahamas.

Which festival fills up with players most will be an intriguing subplot to the action at the felt in December but Kornuth will have his mind firmly set on the task of becoming champion. Whoever comes sixth will win $101,000, so the pay-jumps at this stage are going to be painful for whoever doesn’t win.

The factor of Chance Kornuth’ sole remaining WPT ‘Shooting Star’ bounty – worth $2,500 – still being in play won’t likely affect the play purely because the value of it is diminished now by the remaining payouts on the line. Under the lights of the television cameras, with the ultimate pressure, Kornuth’s experience in similar circumstances may well stand him in good stead for one of the biggest final tables of the year when it comes around just before Christmas in Las Vegas.