Bodog Beat

Bodog Poker pro Justin Bonomo will be returning to Day 3 of the WPT Festa al Lago later today. (Bodog Beat Image)

The WPT Festa al Lago has been drawing a lot of attention over the past couple of days, not for the big-name poker pros that have come out for the event, but for the extended amount of time that those players have been given to buy into the tournament. For the first time in major poker tournament history, entrants could buy their way into the tournament on Day 2, all the way up until Level 9 in fact.

So, with 245 players registering during Day 1 and 30 during Day 2, there was a grand total of 275 players all coughing up $15,000 to play and thereby generating a $4,001,250 prizepool and a $1,218,225 first-place prize. With Day 3 about to kick off at the Bellagio there are 98 players remaining and among those players is Bodog Poker Justin Bonomo. This is how he ended up the day according to his Twitter (and verified by the official chip counts):

197,500 end of day 2. Avg is 160k.

A man of few words that Bonomo. However, there is a video blog that contains more words that will be going up later today.

Anyway, among the top ten in chip counts as the day begins will be Mark Seif (2nd – 473k), Dutch Boyd (3rd – 453k), Chad 'lilholdem954′ Batista (4th – 425k) and David "The Dragon" Pham (7th – 365k). There are many other notable players still in the hunt but we'll wait until the field narrows down some more before listing them all out.

Stay tuned for more impossibly lazy updates from the WPT Festa al Lago and if you want a chance to play in a major international poker tournament, then check out the Bodog Flight Club promotion and it's generous prize packages.