The Rarest Bracelet Event Has Zero Former Champions on Top

Forty-six players remain in WSOP Event #77, the only Triple Draw Lowball bracelet event of the summer, and the chip leader has never cashed at the WSOP before.

Ko Goto, a Japanese player with zero bracelets and no recorded WSOP earnings, is sitting on 720,000 chips. That's nearly triple the next-closest stack. In a $2,500 limit event built around one of the most obscure format rotations in tournament poker, the scoreboard reads like an alternate universe.

The Top of the Counts

Jonathan Morrell holds 278,000. Robert Shuptrine, who has one WSOPC ring and $243,462 in lifetime earnings across two final tables, sits at 259,000. Jason Daly (257,000) is the most credentialed player near the top: three bracelets, four rings, $1.33M in lifetime cashes, and 12 career final tables.

Ko Goto, a Japanese player with zero bracelets and no recorded WSOP earnings, is sitting on 720,000 chips.

Simen Gulbrandsen of Norway rounds out the named stacks at 153,000 with just $2,298 in career earnings.

Why This Is Worth Watching

Mixed Triple Draw Lowball rotates through three draw-lowball variants in a limit format. It rewards hand-reading discipline and an encyclopedic knowledge of draw structures that most hold'em and PLO specialists never develop. The field tends to be small, self-selecting, and stubborn. It is the kind of event where a player nobody has heard of can lead wire-to-wire because the skill distribution is genuinely flat at the top.

Goto's 720,000 stack gives him nearly 4.7x what Morrell holds in second place. That gap is enormous in limit, where pots build incrementally rather than through single all-in confrontations. Chipping away at that lead takes hours.

Daly's three bracelets make him the clear pedigree pick still alive. But in a format this strange, pedigree is a weak signal.

Day 2 action continues at the Horseshoe. Coverage runs until play concludes for the night.