Shiina Okamoto adds EPT Barcelona to her staggering list of conquests
There’s a relatively small starting field in the $1,650 buy-in Women’s High Roller event here in Barcelona, but no matter the number of entries, there would be one very clear favourite.
Shiina Okamoto is without peer in the women’s game at the moment: a back-to-back bracelet winner in the Ladies Event at the World Series, she has come here to Barcelona for the European Poker Tour and duly won the €550 Women’s Event here as well.
There were 126 entries and the leading lights of women’s poker. But Okamoto was once again impossible to beat.
This is Okamoto’s third trip to Barcelona, and this time in Europe she also played the Women’s Summer Festival, hosted by PokerStars at the Hippodrome in London. Arguably the biggest news coming out of that tournament was that she only managed to finish third in the High Roller there.
A counterfeit on the river ended that one, leaving Okamoto with a £4,840 consolation prize instead of another trophy.
But she made up for it with the win here, and credits her new-found celebrity for her continued winning streak.
“After I won the Ladies event last year, I got a little famous,” Okamoto says. “So women tried to adjust their play against me because they thought I bluff a lot, or am especially tough to play against. But I have been counter-adjusting to that, and I think that it has been working really well. That’s why I have been able to keep winning.”
Shiina Okamoto is in a league of her own
She says that she now approaches the table with great confidence, and rightly so, given her recent record. The slightly smaller field sizes here in Europe, at least in comparison with the record-breaking turnout in Vegas, has also played to her strengths.
“I don’t really notice much difference in the play, but since the field is much smaller, even when I make it to the final table, I don’t feel that much pressure,” she says.
Okamoto lines up alongside Team PokerStars Ambassadors Maria Konnikova and Marle Spragg, among others, in the Women’s High Roller today. And although Okamoto says her strict schedule of playing has denied her the chance to explore Barcelona, she’s still committed to the task.
She was knocked out early, permitting this interview, as it happens. But she had only one word on her mind: “Re-entry.”
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