Todd Brunson's 17 Final Tables and One Unfinished Number

The Resume in One Line

Todd Brunson has made 17 WSOP final tables across a career that spans three decades, and at 1,280,000 chips in the $10,000 Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better Championship, the gap between his first bracelet and a potential second is measured in a single session.

Seventeen final tables. One bracelet. $2,365,074 in lifetime WSOP earnings. Those three numbers tell you everything about Brunson's career: consistent deep runs, elite mixed-game chops, and exactly one piece of gold hardware that has never felt like enough.

Seventeen final tables, one bracelet, and $2,365,074 in lifetime WSOP earnings: those three numbers tell you everything about Todd Brunson's career.

Where He Sits Right Now

Brunson enters Day 2 of Event #9 ranked second in chips with 1,280,000. That stack puts him just ahead of Nam Le (1,180,000), who brings $2,961,140 in lifetime earnings and 10 WSOP final tables of his own. The two biggest stacks in the room belong to players with a combined 27 final-table appearances.

Further down the leaderboard, John Esposito sits eighth at 650,000 chips. Esposito already owns one bracelet and has 16 career final tables with $2,180,034 in lifetime earnings. He's the kind of opponent who doesn't give chips back quietly.

James Chen (580,000, $730,088 lifetime) and David Lin (490,000, $548,821 lifetime) round out the named stacks. Neither has a bracelet yet, but both have made WSOP final tables before. This is not a soft field leaking chips to the short stack.

Why 17 Final Tables Matters

Final-table frequency is the hardest stat to fake in tournament poker. You can bink a bracelet on a heater. You can't accidentally show up at 17 final tables across multiple decades without being genuinely elite at navigating fields.

Brunson's single bracelet has always understated his ability. He plays a schedule heavy on Championship-level events (the $10K buy-in tier where the fields are smaller and the competition is denser), and converting those final tables at a higher rate would put his trophy case in a completely different category. The fact that he's still doing it in 2026, still stacking chips in a $10K Omaha Hi-Lo field, is the point.

The Brunson name carries its own gravity. His father, Doyle, won 10 WSOP bracelets and helped define what professional poker looked like for half a century. Todd has built a career that would be remarkable for anyone without the last name, but the last name means the comparison is always there. A second bracelet won't erase it, but it would shift the conversation.

The Path From Here

At 1,280,000 chips on Day 2, Brunson has a workable stack but not a dominant one. Omaha Hi-Lo Championship events reward patience in split-pot spots and punish overcommitment to one side of the board. With Le and Esposito both deep, the late stages of this event project as a grind between veterans who have been in this exact seat before.

Brunson's 17th final table got him to this point. The question is whether this is the event where the number next to "bracelets" finally changes from one to two.

That answer comes down to a single session of poker.