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Event 51, S.H.O.E.

Buy-In: $1,000
Entrants: 730
Final Table: July 3, 2007
Bracelet Winner: Dao Bac wins $157,975

Dao Bac can't speak English very well because he has spent most of the nineteen years he's been in the US playing poker. He carried a leather-bound book covered in gold-letter Vietnamese script with him everywhere at this years WSOP. When asked what it was he replied "Buddha bible". A friend explained: "It makes him cool down, make him relaxed." With two cash finishes last year and another two this year including his bracelet Dao Bac's thing seems to be working for him. He says his wife gets the bracelet though.

Event 52, No-Limit Hold'em w/Re-Buys

Buy-In: $1,000
Entrants: 1,048
Final Table: July 4, 2007
Bracelet Winner: Michael Graves wins $742,121

Michael Graves is a med student from Austin Texas who started playing poker online and soon moved on to the "easy money" in sit-and-goes. "I played those for a long time before moving on to cash games, where I learned that I didn't actually know how to play poker - I just knew how to play sit-and-goes," he said in a recent interview. More cash games, more hard lessons: "Cash games taught me a lot of good hand-reading abilities," he added, and that's proven invaluable as he fought his way through one of the fiercest three-way tournament battles of the WSOP '07 season to finally take down the gold and the green.

Event 53, Limit Hold'em Shootout

Buy-In: $1,500
Entrants: 720
Final Table: July 4, 2007
Bracelet Winner: Ram Vaswani wins $217,438

Youngest member of the famous Hendon Mob, former snooker player, now a snooker manager and professional poker player, Ram has been playing poker since he was 12. Back then it was for candy, now it's for real. With three final table finishes in WSOP 2004 Ram stepped into the lights and this years bracelet is a big milestone for the player who takes his gave seriously and groups poker squarely in with other legitimate sporting events: "Train for major tournaments by exercising and practicing your moves," he says, and he does.

Event 54, World Championship No-Limit 2-7 Draw Lowball w/Re-Buys

Buy-In: $5,000
Entrants: 78
Final Table: July 5, 2007
Bracelet Winner: Erik Seidel wins $538,835

Erik Seidel got close to the winner’s seat very early in his career. In 1988 he entered his first WSOP and signed up for 10 events. After busting out of the first nine he found himself at the final table of the Main Event, and then heads-up with Johnny Chan, the defending champion, for the bracelet. He lost. Nearly two decades, 17 cash WSOP finishes including 10 final tables, and seven gold bracelets later Erik says he still remembers that game. This year he adds an eighth bracelet and is the only WSOP player to win titles in three consecutive years.

Event 55, World Championship No-Limit Texas Hold'emM

Buy-In: $10,000
Entrants: 6,358
Final Table: July 17, 2007
Bracelet Winner: Jerry Yang wins $8,250,000

Born in Laos, the 39-year-old now makes his home in California with his wife and six children. He works as a psychologist and social worker and only started playing poker two years ago. His run to the WSOP Championship started with a $225 satellite buy-in at his local Pechanga Resort and Casino. He takes the game pretty seriously and looks forward to his responsibilities as the World Champion of Poker: "I would like to be a good ambassador for poker - that's my goal," he said moments after his big win. (See our feature article on the Main Event 2007 for more details)

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