Steve Billirakis Has 950K Chips and a Three-Bracelet Problem

Steve Billirakis has two gold bracelets, $2.36 million in lifetime earnings, and 950,000 chips at the final table of the $2,500 Mixed Big Bet Event — and six players standing between him and a third.

The problem? One of those six already has three.

The Table That Won't Fold Easy

Naoya Kihara is sitting on 3,190,000 chips — more than triple Billirakis's stack and the commanding lead at this seven-handed final table. The Japanese pro has three WSOP bracelets of his own, 11 career final tables, and $2.81 million in lifetime cashes. He isn't here to ladder. He's here to win his fourth.

Then there's Dylan Smith, stacked at 2,120,000 chips with $3.2 million in career earnings and 13 final-table appearances. Smith has never won a bracelet, but his résumé is built on deep runs in exactly the kind of mixed-format, high-skill events where casual tourists don't survive Day 1.

Naoya Kihara is sitting on 3,190,000 chips — more than triple Billirakis's stack and the commanding lead at this seven-handed final table.

Billirakis, at 950K, is fourth of seven. Not short. Not comfortable. The kind of stack that demands perfect timing across multiple formats — pot-limit Omaha, pot-limit 2-7 triple draw, big bet mix rotations where one misread costs you a third of your chips before you've poured your next coffee.

Why Mixed Big Bet Is a Different Animal

The $2,500 Mixed Big Bet Event is seven-handed by design, and the format rewards the kind of player who can shift gears between draw games and flop games without losing a step. There are no hiding spots. You can't nit it up waiting for aces when the game just rotated to 2-7 and the blinds are eating you.

Billirakis has the pedigree for it. Nine lifetime WSOP final tables across a career that started when he won his first bracelet at 21 years old. He's been in these chairs before — short of the chip lead, long on experience, needing to find the right spots in a format that punishes one-dimensional players.

But Kihara's stack is a gravitational force. At 3.19 million, he can apply pressure on every single pot without risking elimination. Billirakis has to navigate around that mass while also contending with Smith's 2.12 million.

The Rest of the Field

Danny Chang rounds out the middle of the pack at 550,000 chips. Chang has two WSOP Circuit rings, 16 career final tables, and $713K in lifetime earnings — a résumé that screams steady, dangerous, and comfortable at short-handed tables.

Hiroyuki Noda sits at 440,000 chips. This is Noda's first career WSOP final table, with $204K in lifetime cashes. The stage is new. The money is already life-changing. Whether that frees him up or freezes him could shape the entire dynamic at the bottom of the counts.

Two more unnamed stacks fill out the remaining seats.

What Bracelet Three Would Mean

Billirakis won his first bracelet in 2007 at the age of 21 — at the time, the youngest player ever to win one. A third would put him in a club that gets smaller every year: multi-bracelet winners who proved it wasn't a fluke and then proved it again.

Kihara is chasing the same thing from the other side of the table, with a bigger stack and the same hunger. A fourth bracelet would be a statement.

The chips say Kihara. The format says anything can happen. And Billirakis has 950K reasons to believe he's done this before.