Online Poker Pros Making Presence Felt at WPT World Poker Finals

Justin "zeejustin" Bonomo is just one of the online poker pros littered throughout the field for Day 1B of the WPT Foxwwods World Poker Finals. (Bodog Beat Image)

Quick question: Since this event is the WPT World Poker Finals, does every entrant deserve the title "finalist"? We think so, and so it shall be.

Among the 338 finalists who put up the $10,000 buy-in for Day 1B are a bunch of players that we're gonna have to stop referring to as just online poker pros at some point. Even though many of them cut their teeth playing the big games online, they are now dominating live poker as much as the poker pros who developed their skills in brick and mortar casinos.

Players who have been referred to by their feared online names are now known synonymously by their actual real world names and they are all over Day 1B of the WPT Foxwoods World Poker Finals.  Yesterday saw finalists Tom "durrrr" Dwan, Hevad "RaiNKhaN" Khan, Luke "BdBeatSlayer" Vrabel, Justin "zeejustin" Bonomo, Jared "TheWacoKidd" Hamby and Cliff "JohnnyBax" Josephy all in the field, and that's just some of them. Three of them - Dwan, Khan and Vrabel - are in the top 10 at the finish of Day 1B.

Of course, there were also the requisite "standard" poker pro finalists in attendance like Freddy Deeb, Nam Le, John Juanda, TJ Cloutier, poker power couple David Benyamine and Erica Schoenberg and Bodog poker pros David Williams and Josh Arieh, all made it through to Day 2. However, controversial finalist Mark Seif was apparently unable to make use of any superuser account to get out of the day and hit the rail along with fellow finalists Allen Cunningham, John  D'Agostino, Gavin Smith and Men "The Master" Nguyen.

With the 338 finalists today the total number of finalists who entered the World Poker Finals comes to a respectable 575 finalists, down slightly from last year but still a good turnout. The payout schedule has also been announced and the WPT will be making yet another poker millionaire with the final finalist taking home $1,704,986.

The 215 finalists left from Day 1A will join the 151 from the previous day at noon to play five more blind levels before calling it a night. Live updates are available at CardPlayer.com and PokerListings.com.