Shiina Okamato won the 2025 WSOP Ladies Championship. She also won it in 2024 and finished second in the same event in 2023. The fields she got through were 1,368 (2025), 1,245 (2024), and 1,295 (2023).
That is, without doubt, one of the most stunning — and unlikely — achievements in tournament poker history. And the way Okamato did it made the feat even more impressive. She played brilliantly, and with poise and grace.
It didn’t go unnoticed. Some of the game’s best players paid tribute to Okamoto on social media. Here are just a few of the reactions to her win from last night.
Mizrachi or Okamoto?
Not much else has come close to Okamoto’s feat.
Incredible, one of them also happened this summer, when Michael Mizrachi won his fourth $50K Poker Players Championship — one of the toughest pro-heavy tournaments in history.
In his latest vlog, Daniel Negreanu found it tough to separate Mizrachi and Okamota.
“Shiina Okamota. I played with her in the Main Event last year," Negreanu said. "She’s super aggro… Some crazy stuff happening at the WSOP. Probably the craziest of all, actually Shiina’s up there, because that’s crazy, three years in a row…
“What tournament is the most grueling, most pro-heavy, most difficult to win, and most coveted? Well, the answer is the Poker Players Championship… Mizrachi has won it four times."
If Okamota wins the Ladies Championship again next year, we’re sure that even Negreanu may declare it the greatest achievement in modern tournament poker. And we’ll have no choice but to accept that we’re living in a simulation
Newhouse: Not finishing ninth again
One other incredible achievement in the poker world came when Mark Newhouse finished ninth in the WSOP Main Event two years in a row. That was heartbreaking for him but unfathomable in terms of math. And made even more incredible because of the tweet he put out before the 2014 tournament.
Newhouse made back-to-back Main Event final tables through field sizes of 6,352 and 6,683. He’s the only player who made the November Nine twice before the format of playing a delayed final table was abandoned. That meant he had to wait four months both times to find out that he wouldn’t move up the payout ladder.
