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  It's tough to know what is more important in the world of sports this week: the World Series of Poker finishing up all of its undercard events and preparing for the Main Event, or the Joey Chestnut defeating the legendary Kobayashi in the sport of competitive eating and bringing the title back to the United States. Maybe many people would be impressed with someone who can stuff 66 hotdogs (and buns) into their body in less than twelve minutes, but the fifty-four events that lead up to the Superbowl of the poker world has to take center stage.



  The preliminary events ended with a bang. Chad Brown and Erik Seidel were playing heads up for the No Limit 2-7 Draw Lowball tournament title. At one point Chad had a chip lead that was almost 4 to 1 over Erik. This is the sort of advantage that usually guarantees victory. As the Buffalo Bills of the late nineties and Al Gore have both proved, no lead is safe in a competition. Erik Seidel chopped at Brown's stack of chips like Paul Bunyan abusing a stubborn Sequoia tree. Chad eventually caved to Erik's relentless attacks and was eliminated on hand #174.



  This was Chad Brown's 7th money finish this year: an impressive feat. This accomplishment was eclipsed by Erik Seidel winning his 8th bracelet and putting himself historically in the same strata with Phil Hellmuth, Johnny Chan, Doyle Brunson, and Johnny Moss.



  Event 53 also featured a come from behind win. Ram Vaswani was playing with only half the number of chips as Andrew Ward as the play was getting down to a head to head encounter. Ram fortified his chip stack by eliminating Anh Van Nguyen and taking his meager stack of 230,000 disks. This win gave Ram almost a million chips though, and put him in position to challenge Ward.



  The next several hands saw Vaswani sanding down Andrew's chip stack until he eventually sucked Ward into a trap that he sprung with an Ace high Flush. Ironically the word "flush" had a lot to do with how Andrew Ward felt at that moment as he was kicked to the curb and Ram claimed his bracelet.



  Now we go into a little lull at the WSOP as we gear up for the Main Event. This is the calm formality that happens before the mayhem ensues; kind of like playing the national anthem before a Detroit Pistons/Indiana Pacers basketball game. What happens next should be interesting.