{"id":35750,"date":"2026-06-10T17:14:49","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T17:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.casino.us\/?p=35750"},"modified":"2026-06-10T17:14:49","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T17:14:49","slug":"naoya-kihara-wins-two-world-series-of-poker-bracelets-in-four-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.casino.us\/naoya-kihara-wins-two-world-series-of-poker-bracelets-in-four-days\/","title":{"rendered":"Naoya Kihara Wins Two World Series of Poker Bracelets in Four Days"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Naoya Kihara actually thought about sitting out this year’s World Series of Poker. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Naoya
Naoya Kihara won two bracelets at the 2026 World Series of Poker — so far. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

June is a busy time in Japan for those in finance industry, and the 44 year-old former PokerStars ambassador hardly plays poker anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But came he did, and immediately made himself the talk of the Horseshoe by winning two WSOP bracelet in four days to triple the number of bracelets. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s been a long time for the 44-year-old, who became the first player from Japan to win a WSOP bracelet 14 years ago in a $5,000 Pot-Limit Omaha event. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kihara has made a handful of WSOP final tables since then and even locked up his biggest cash of his career when he finished third in the $50,000 Poker Players Championship won by Dan Cates in 2022 for $639,257. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kihara not only won his second and third bracelets, but he did it in historic fashion by winning two back-to-back “championship” events, which carry buy-ins of at least $10,000. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He started his double-dip by winning all the chips in the $10,000 deuce-to-seven single-draw lowball championship, which brought in 198 entries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kihara took the lions share of $428,923 of the $1.8 million prize pool. David Lin emerged as the runner-up from a final table that included John Cynn in third for $198,302, Rutaro Suzuki in fourth for $139,038, and Shaun Deeb in fifth for $99,557. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suzuki, Kihari’s countryman, was also going for his third WSOP bracelet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The very next “championship” event was the $10,000 Seven-Card Stud Championship, which started four days later. The 130 entrants built a prize pool of $1.2 million, and again, all the chips would end up in front of Kihari. He won another $310,970. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quibang “James” Cheung was the runner-up for $201,308, followed by Allen Kessler ($139,036), Jeremy Ausmus ($98,782), Chris Brewer ($72,254) and Michael Mizrachi ($54,458). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mizrachi<\/a> is of course the both the 2025 Main Event and Player’s champion (an event he won four times), which got him snap-inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kessler is 15th on the WSOP all-time list for cashes with 323, and his 61 final tables put him at number 19. Although he owns five WSOP Circuit rings, he has yet to win a bracelet. He’s finish second five time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cheung was also going for a double-dip after winning a $1,500 stud event in May. It’s his first bracelet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kihari’s win ensures that the streak of a player winning at least two bracelets in a series continues. It started in 2000 with Chris Ferguson. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Naoya Kihara actually thought about sitting out this year’s World Series of Poker. June is a busy time in Japan for those in finance industry, and the 44 year-old former PokerStars ambassador hardly plays poker anymore. But came he did, and immediately made himself the talk of the Horseshoe by winning two WSOP bracelet in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":35751,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[497],"tags":[],"vertical":[],"class_list":["post-35750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"lang":"en","translations":{"en":35750},"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/www.casino.us\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Naoya-Kihara-3rd-600x400.jpeg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/www.casino.us\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Naoya-Kihara-3rd-600x600.jpeg","author_info":{"display_name":"Bob Pajich","author_link":"https:\/\/news.casino.us\/author\/bob-pajich\/"},"pll_sync_post":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.casino.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.casino.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.casino.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.casino.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.casino.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news.casino.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.casino.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.casino.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.casino.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.casino.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35750"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.casino.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=35750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}