Naoya Kihara's Final Table Machine Won't Stop Running

Naoya Kihara has three WSOP bracelets, $2.8 million in lifetime cashes, and 11 career final tables — and he just added to that last number in Event #84, the $5,000 Super Turbo Bounty No-Limit Hold'em.

He busted 10th, one spot shy of the official eight-handed final table, but the run itself is the story. The Japanese pro was among the chip leaders at the 16-player mark with 4,040,000, then saw his stack evaporate in the super turbo structure before he could reach the final eight.

That's the cruelty of this format. And it's also what makes Kihara's consistency across formats so remarkable.

Eleven career WSOP final tables across at least three distinct formats — that's not a heater, that's a blueprint.

The Resume in Numbers

Kihara's WSOP record reads like a format-agnostic clinic. His three bracelets span No-Limit Hold'em and Dealers Choice — two games that share almost nothing in common except that Kihara figured out how to win both.

The lifetime earnings sit at $2,809,347. Eleven final tables. Zero WSOPC rings, meaning every one of those deep runs came at the main summer series in Las Vegas, against full-strength fields.

For context, here's who else was at the Event #84 final table area: Khoi Le Nguyen, the Vietnamese pro with one bracelet and $3.29 million in career earnings, busted 9th. Colin Robinson, another one-bracelet winner with nearly $2.96 million lifetime, was in the field at 16 players. Yenhan Chen of Taiwan took the chip lead into the final table with 20,100,000.

Kihara wasn't the biggest stack. He wasn't even the richest résumé at the table by raw earnings. But 11 final tables is a number that jumps off the page regardless of who's sitting next to you.

Why Formats Don't Seem to Matter

Most players specialize. They grind one stake, one game, one structure until the edges calcify into habit. Kihara keeps showing up in events that require entirely different skill sets.

A $5,000 Super Turbo Bounty plays nothing like a $10,000 Dealers Choice event. The turbo structure compresses decisions into shove-math and timing. Dealers Choice rewards breadth across eight or more game variants and punishes anyone who can't switch gears mid-orbit.

Kihara has won gold in both.

That versatility is what separates a player who runs hot in one summer from one who keeps surfacing year after year. Kihara's first bracelet came in 2012. His most recent came in 2023. That's an 11-year gap between bracelets one and three — a span that covers multiple eras of poker strategy.

The Field Around Him

Event #84's final stretch featured an international cast. Kenneth Kong of Singapore, with just $19,908 in lifetime earnings, was among the 16-player field — a reminder that super turbo bounty events flatten experience gaps in ways deeper-stacked tournaments don't. Daniel Tafur of Spain held 600,000 at the two-table mark. Nicholas Pupillo, an American with $408,729 lifetime and three prior final tables, was also in the mix.

But Kihara was the only three-bracelet winner in the field. Nobody else at those two tables had double-digit final tables on their ledger.

What Comes Next

A 10th-place finish in a $5,000 buy-in event isn't the headline Kihara wanted. But the pattern matters more than the result. Eleven final tables across multiple formats and more than a decade of WSOP play puts him in a tier of consistency that very few players — from any country — can match.

The 2026 WSOP still has events left on the schedule. If recent history is any guide, Kihara will be at another final table before the series ends.