WPT® Bay 101 Final Table Set: Quoc Mai Leads, Finish Waits Until December

The $5,300 WPT® Bay 101 Shooting Star Championship reached its six-handed televised final table on October 26. There's no champion yet, and there won't be for a while.

For now play has paused, and will be for about six weeks. It will resume December 15 in Las Vegas. Quoc Mai leads the last six into a shot at $470,500, the Mike Sexton WPT® Champions Cup, and a WPT® World Championship seat.

The event drew 584 entries for a reported prize pool of $2,613,200, with the top 73 paid.

Here's everything you need to know.

Mai bagged the chip lead by winning the last hand of the night, and he'll return well in front:

The man out front is the least likely name on the list. Introducing Quoc Mai, from San Francisco. Before now, he had never won anything close to this. Taking a look at CardPlayer's account, his previous best live cash was $4,660. That cash came from a RunGood event at Thunder Valley earlier in the year.

Finishing at this table is huge. It's already guaranteed a career-changing result, and he's done it from the front.

He took the lead on the final hand of the night, a three-way all-in that cleared two players at once. By the reporting, Mai's pocket kings held on a 9-2-2-4-9 board against the ace-queen of Jeremy Menard (out seventh, $72,000) and the pocket threes of Joe Nguyen (eighth, $56,500).

It's a triple-up that vaulted him to the top of the counts as the table reached six. He's an underdog carrying the chip lead into a televised final.

Mai won't have it easy.

Right behind him sits Chahn Jung, sitting on 227 big blinds and riding a strong year. He was runner-up in a $3,000 WSOP event in 2026 and has around $2 million in career scores. And the most decorated player left is Shawn Daniels. He's a WSOP bracelet winner and the 2025 WPT® Rolling Thunder champion. More impressive yet, he's got roughly $3.9 million in lifetime earnings. He will be returning fourth in chips.

It's an interesting shape for the WPT® final table. We've got an in-form unknown out front, a proven closer lurking, and three more with the stack to make a run.

There's about $1.4 million still on the table among the six, and the jumps are steep:

The $470,500 includes a $10,400 entry to the WPT® World Championship. So, it's roughly $460,100 in cash plus that seat. It also comes with the Mike Sexton WPT® Champions Cup, the trophy every WPT® champion wants their name on.

So the reason for the six-week pause is that it's part of the deal with a televised final table.

When play resumes on December 15, it will be right in WPT® World Championship season. The Season 24 finale runs at Wynn Las Vegas from December 13–20. The Bay 101 champion will punch a ticket while it's only getting started.

For context, last year's Bay 101 edition drew 672 entries. Kharlin Sued came out on top for $480,700, so this year's 584-entry turnout is more or less in the same range. Also, the invited bounty players don't appear to have reached the final six. Matt Salsberg was the deepest-running of the names, out in 19th.

What other names ran deep? We have Phil Hellmuth (48th), Faraz Jaka (38th) and Joe McKeehen (15th).

A champion-and-payouts recap will follow once the final six play it out on December 15.