Todd Brunson Leading the $10K 2-7 Championship Is the Best Story of the Summer

Todd Brunson has 1,580,000 chips with 15 players left in the $10,000 Limit 2-7 Lowball Triple Draw Championship, and if he wins this bracelet, nothing else that happens this summer will top it.

I don't care how the Main Event plays out. I don't care who final-tables the $250K Super High Roller. A 57-year-old Brunson — one prior bracelet, $2.78M in lifetime earnings, 18 career final tables — taking down the draw-game championship his father helped make famous would be the single most narratively perfect result the 2026 WSOP could produce.

The field tells you everything

Look at who was in this tournament. John Juanda — five bracelets, $9.33M in career earnings, 48 lifetime final tables — busted 16th. Andrew Yeh, a bracelet winner with $1.74M in cashes, went out 18th. Joseph McKeehen, the 2015 Main Event champion with $2.4M lifetime, couldn't survive Day 2. These aren't tourists. This is the draw-game old guard, and Todd Brunson is the last man from that generation still standing.

A 57-year-old Brunson taking down the draw-game championship his father helped make famous would be the single most narratively perfect result the 2026 WSOP could produce.

The counter-take is weak

Some people will say draw games are dying for a reason — low viewership, niche appeal, dwindling entries. Fine. But shrinking a format's schedule doesn't prove the format lacks value. It proves the schedule-makers are chasing hold'em volume. The $10K 2-7 Triple Draw Championship still draws a field stacked with multi-bracelet winners and players carrying eight-figure resumes. The talent density per seat in this event is absurd. That's not a dying game. That's a game the WSOP is choosing to under-serve.

Naoya Kihara — three bracelets, $2.81M in career earnings — sits second in chips at 496,000. Mark Roland, a three-time WSOPC ring winner with 11 career final tables, is right there at 389,000. This final stretch isn't going to be easy.

But Brunson more than quadrupled his stack from 382,000 to 1,580,000 during Day 2 while the field dropped from 26 to 15. He's not limping into the final table. He's running over it.

If he closes it out, this becomes the headline of the summer — and the strongest argument the draw-game faithful have had in years.