Barbara Akemi: Brazil’s best poker player right now?

Akemi breaks her personal live poker record and banks nearly €100K at EPT Barcelona

If you understand the game, you know: a live 10th-place finish in a tournament as prestigious as the EPT Main Event is a genuinely impressive result for a rising professional. Akemi posted the best-ever finish by a Brazilian woman in a European Poker Tour Main Event, breaking yet another record in her career.

For her 10th-place finish, she took home €97,700, the biggest live tournament cash of her career. Bubbling the final table, Akemi fell to Manuel Ferrari, who went on to win the tournament.

For comparison, the previous best mark by a Brazilian woman in an EPT Main Event dated back 17 years, to Maria Mayrinck’s 43rd-place finish in London. Akemi also outperformed every other Brazilian who reached Day 5 of the tournament — four players besides her, including Gabriel Tavares, partner and Head Coach at Samba Poker Team.

Sunday Million and a WSOP bracelet: Barbara Akemi’s complete package

One of Barbara’s earliest major achievements came in 2023, when she won the Sunday Million, PokerStars’ head weekly tournament.

To pull it off, earning just over $92,000, Akemi had to outlast a field of 10,662 entries. The win was streamed live to more than 2,000 viewers on her Twitch channel, marking the moment Akemi became the first woman in the world to win the tournament.

It didn’t take long for the next milestone: in August 2025, Barbara claimed her first WSOP bracelet by winning the $500 Ladies NLH Championship online. On top of just over $20,000, she also picked up a $30,000 package to the WSOP Paradise, where she played later that year.

At that point, Akemi became the first person ever to win both of those tournaments, placing her on a very respectable shelf of poker players worldwide. Today, she’s banked more than $200,000 live, plus several hundred thousand more online.

Barbara Akemi has always lived with competition

A four-time Brazilian Taekwondo champion, Barbara Akemi is no stranger to pressure — or to winning. She was introduced to the game by friends from the sport and started out playing free tournaments, known as freerolls. After a few wins, she began dedicating herself to the game more seriously, joining the CardRoom team in 2017.

Used to winning, it was the mental side of the game that Akemi had to work through before she started cashing big.

“It’s really hard to win a poker tournament, so you have to learn how to lose, and it took me a while to learn that. You lose a lot in order to win, but when you do win, it makes up for it,” she told the ND Mais website.

A fanbase that follows every step of her journey

Akemi’s relationship with poker doesn’t stop at the tables: the Brazilian pro also spent years streaming live on Twitch, on her channel “baakemi,” where thousands of people watched her win the Sunday Million.

Beyond the wins, she also shared tough moments, strategy, ideas, study sessions, and much more with her fans, building one of the leading communities in poker today. Currently on a streaming hiatus, she’s already closing in on 20,000 followers and remains one of the most-followed players in Brazilian poker.

The central question: is Barbara Akemi Brazil’s best female poker player today?

Now that we’ve covered Akemi’s résumé, it’s easier to understand the debate around the title of Brazil’s best. Before Barbara, several names have held that unofficial title, most notably Maridu (mentioned earlier for her EPT feat) and Vivian Saliba.

Each had their own role to play: Maridu was on the front line, at the forefront of Brazilian women’s poker, setting historic marks. To this day, she still holds the best-ever finish by a Brazilian woman in a WSOP Main Event (403rd, in 2014), and she was also a PokerStars ambassador.

Saliba holds the highest career earnings among Brazilian women, as well as the biggest single cash ($308,000, for finishing 4th in Event #64 at the 2019 WSOP) and the first live WSOP bracelet won by a Brazilian woman, at WSOP Europe in 2024.

Other names, like Rosana Thorlay, also belong in the conversation, given that she was the first Brazilian woman ever to win a WSOP bracelet.

What sets Akemi apart, though, is the moment she’s living right now: total focus at the tables and major results to show for it. As the only person in the world to have won both a Sunday Million and a WSOP bracelet, and the holder of the best-ever EPT Main Event result by a Brazilian woman, she can absolutely be considered the most versatile and consistent player of the moment.

Akemi has no plans to stop here

On the rise, Akemi has no intention of stopping here — she wants to go even further. Her goal: move up in stakes and start playing bigger. The EPT Barcelona result confirms that evolution and leaves us with a question — will we see Akemi reach even greater heights?

While she may not single-handedly hold every record in the country, Akemi stands out as the most complete player: major wins online and live, strong results in traditional tournaments, and consistency throughout her career in recent years.

So, what do you think? Can Akemi already be considered Brazil’s best female poker player, or does the Londrina native still have some road ahead of her before earning that title? If not Barbara, who do you consider Brazil’s best right now? Drop a comment and join the discussion with PokerListings.