The opening flight of the Season XV World Poker Tour® bestbet Bounty Scramble took place on Friday at bestbet Jacksonville. The $5,000 buy-in event features an exciting twist, with over 30 players in the field designated as bounty players. Busting one of the designated bounty players will earn a player a $2,500 bonus, and finishing atop the counts at the end of the two starting flights is worth a $5,000 bonus.
Jean “Prince” Gaspard (pictured, right) bagged the early chip lead with 245,800 in his stack and picked up the $5,000 bonus. He finished ahead of Justin Zaki’s 221,200, and those two players were the only two to finish above 200,000 in chips.
Top 10 Chip Counts
1. Jean Gaspard – 245,800
2. Justin Zaki – 221,200
3. Matt Stout – 181,800
4. Kunal Patel – 177,100
5. Kory Kilpatrick – 175,000
6. Maxx Coleman – 160,100
7. Roston Stukes – 159,600
8. Joe McKeehen – 132,300
9. Seth Davies – 132,000
10. Garrett Greer – 124,900
Plenty of bounty players were sent home on the opening day, but with this event allowing for re-entries until the start of Level 7 on Saturday, you can expect many of them to return for another shot. Of the bestbet bounty players to bust were Jerry Wong, Sam Soverel, Matt Glantz, and last year’s winner of the event, Tyler Patterson.
Patterson was eliminated by Vimal Reddy in the second-to-last level of the day. Patterson’s 
couldn’t win a flip against Reddy’s 
.
The second starting flight in the $1 million guaranteed event will commence at 12 p.m. local time on Saturday, and you can follow along with coverage right here on WPT.com.