Bodog Beat

Team Bodog's Justin Bonomo is at the final of the Ceasars Palace WSOP Circuit event. (Bodog Beat Image)

In just a few hours, the final table of the WSOP Circuit event at Caesars Palace will get underway and Team Bodog's Justin Bonomo will be among the nine players battling for the almost $500,000 first-place prize.

Bonomo had a rollercoaster of a day yesterday, up as high as 400k in chips, including eliminating both Nenad Medic and Clint Roberts on one hand, to slipping a bit toward the end to finish up where he is at 272k. However, he is not far off the average stack and is just about 100k in chips within every other player at the final table except for the current chip leader Ben Fineman, who has a dominating chip stack of 828,000.

Day 2 rid itself of quite a few notable players but many of them survived the bursting of the money bubble and finish in the money, including Peter "Nordberg" Feldman, J.C. Alvarado, Alan "BodogAri" Engel, Steve Wong, Danny Wong, Mark Newhouse and Tony Cousineau.

A couple more managed to make it to the final table as well. Noted tournament pro Allen Cunningham will join Bonomo at the final table along with Blair Hinkle, who's coming off a deep run at the WPT LA Poker Classic, and previous WSOP Circuit event champion Doug Lee.

Here are the full final table chip counts:

1. Ben Fineman – 828,000
2. Thomas Hover – 407,000
3. Kelly Samson – 385,000
4. Blair Hinkle – 382,000
5. Doug Lee – 324,000
6. Ralph Perry – 319,000
7. Allen Cunningham – 296,000
8. Justin Bonomo – 272,000
9. Motoyuki "Moto" Mabuchi – 142,000

Final table play gets underway at 2 p.m. PT (5 p.m. ET), so stay tuned to the Beat for updates from this WSOP Circuit event.Charles Simmons writes poker news for the Bodog Beat.