Naoya Kihara Is Eight-Handed for a Second Bracelet No Japanese Player Has Ever Won

Naoya Kihara won Japan's first-ever WSOP bracelet in 2012, and right now he's eight-handed at the $10,000 Seven Card Stud Championship with a chance to do something no Japanese player has done: win a second.

He's sitting on 1,880,000 chips. That's good for second place at the final table. And the only player ahead of him, Qibang Cheung of Great Britain, has never made a WSOP final table before this one.

The Weight of One Bracelet

Kihara's first bracelet came in the $3,000 No-Limit Hold'em event at the 2012 WSOP. It was a landmark for Japanese poker. Before Kihara, no player from Japan had ever won WSOP gold. In the fourteen years since, no other Japanese player has matched him.

That's the fact that frames this final table. Kihara has $1.93 million in lifetime tournament earnings and eight career WSOP final tables. He is not a tourist who got lucky once. He's a player who has been grinding toward this exact moment for over a decade.

No Japanese player has ever won two WSOP bracelets, and Kihara is sitting second in chips with a clear path to being the first.

The Table Around Him

The chip leader is Qibang Cheung, a British player with 1,950,000 in chips but just $142,309 in lifetime earnings. This is his first recorded WSOP final table. He has the stack, but he doesn't have the mileage.

Then there's the other end of the experience spectrum: Michael Mizrachi. The Grinder is at this same final table with 390,000 chips, the short stack among the five players whose counts are public. Mizrachi has eight bracelets, $23.18 million in career earnings, and 32 lifetime final tables. He's been here before. He's also working with less than a quarter of Kihara's stack.

Ryan Miller, a two-time bracelet winner with $1.35 million in earnings and eight final tables of his own, holds 1,130,000. Jason Kluska rounds out the known stacks at 465,000.

Why Stud Matters

The $10,000 Stud Championship is one of the oldest prestige events on the WSOP schedule. It draws a small, specialist field. The buy-in alone filters out casual entrants, and the game itself filters out anyone who built their résumé exclusively in No-Limit Hold'em.

Kihara's first bracelet came in a Hold'em event. Winning this one would prove range across disciplines, and it would do so at the highest buy-in Stud offers.

For Japanese poker, the stakes go beyond one player's trophy case. Japan's poker community has grown steadily, but representation at the WSOP's final stages remains thin. A second Kihara bracelet would be more than a personal milestone. It would be a signal that Japan can produce repeat champions at poker's biggest stage.

The Path From Here

Kihara's 1,880,000 puts him within striking distance of Cheung's lead, and well ahead of most of the table. Stud plays slower than Hold'em. Pots build through multiple betting streets, and positional edges shift with every exposed card. Stack advantages don't evaporate in a single hand the way they can in No-Limit.

That structure favors the player with both chips and experience. Kihara has both.

Eight players remain. One of them will leave the Horseshoe with a gold bracelet. If it's Kihara, he won't just be a two-time champion. He'll be the only Japanese player who can say that.