Shiina Okamoto Wins WSOP Ladies Championship One Year After Coming as Close as Possible

Talk about calling your shot: As the $1,000/$10,000 World Series of Poker Ladies Championship was just beginning, Shiina Okamoto made a post on social media in Japanese that read, in translation: “I want to retrieve the things I left behind last year.”

In 2023, Okamoto came to the final table of the Ladies Championship with an enormous chip lead, but when all the dust cleared, it was Tamar Abraham who wound up with all the chips and that thing Okamoto wanted badly: A WSOP bracelet.

After that stumble, she made this post and pinned it to her X account:

“I may never again in my life be so lucky as to get this far in a tournament with such high variance. I felt that I lacked the skills, including in terms of mental control, but I believe that this is a path that everyone must go through at some point, so I would like to study more, gain more experience and return to this stage again.”

It took her less than a year to return — one day less, to be exact, with a slightly different outcome.

Okamoto is the 2024 WSOP Ladies Champion. She won $171,732 and that thing she forget last summer, the bracelet.

Runner-up of the event is Jamie Kerstetter, a WPT Global partner and poker commentator with an active social media presence. She owns two WSOP Circuit rings, but this is the second time she came as close as possible without winning the bracelet. In 2022, her and Cory Paggeot finished second in the tag-team event.

The Ladies Championship brought in 1,245 entries who generated a prize pool of $1,095,600. The top 187 made the money. The event is officially $10,000, but women get a $9,000 discount.

Both Kerstettler and Okamoto were the only players to make the final table with more than 100 big blinds. Once they got heads up, their stacks were basically even, but a mistake by Kersteller opened the door for Okamoto. From the WSOP hand updates:

“Jamie Kerstetter raised in the big blind to 250,000 with Th8d  after a limp from Shiina Okamoto with Ah2s. Okamoto made the call. The flop came out as 2h9h7s and Kerstetter, as the preflop raiser, placed her continuation bet of 200,000. Okamoto quickly called after hitting her pair of twos.

A 2d was on the turn. Kerstetter checked and Okamoto bet 400,000 with her trips. Kerstetter made the call with her open ended straight draw.

The river Ad gave Okamoto a full boat and she bet out 1,500,000 after Kerstetter checked. Kerstetter took a moment to ponder and decided to bluff the river and three-bet to 3,500,000 and Okamoto quickly called with the boat.”

Less than 20 minutes later, the bracelet was Okamoto’s.