Women Rewrite WSOP History in 2025
Leo Margets and Shiina Okamoto deliver the two biggest milestones for women in WSOP in decades.
The 2025 World Series of Poker produced two landmark moments for women in poker: Shiina Okamoto defended her Ladies Championship title, and Leo Margets became the first woman in 30 years to reach the WSOP Main Event final table, according to PokerNews.
Why It Matters
Margets' Main Event final table run is the most significant milestone for women in the game's premier tournament since the mid-1990s. Visibility at the Main Event final table — broadcast globally and carrying a first-place prize typically exceeding $10 million — carries outsized influence on how recreational players, sponsors, and media perceive gender participation in poker. Okamoto's back-to-back Ladies Championship defence adds a separate but complementary data point: elite women are not just making deep runs, they are repeating. Together, these achievements give operators and tournament directors concrete evidence that women's participation at the highest levels is growing, which may accelerate dedicated programming and prize pool investment.
Context
Women have historically represented a small fraction of WSOP Main Event fields — Poker Industry PRO has tracked female entry rates consistently below 5 percent in recent years. The last woman to reach the Main Event final table before Margets was Barbara Enright in 1995, who finished fifth. Okamoto's 2025 Ladies Championship defence follows her 2024 title, making her one of the few repeat champions in that event's history.
What's Next
The WSOP 2026 series, which begins this summer, will be the first real test of whether 2025's visibility converts into measurably higher female registration numbers. Sponsors and streaming platforms will watch entry-rate data closely for signs of a structural shift. Gambling involves risk; poker is no exception.
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