Kosei Ichinose

– General Introduction –

Kosei Ichinose is a Japanese professional poker player.

He started his career as an online pro, grinding on PokerStars under the screen name “shinbunshi”. He was the first Japanese player to get to the Supernova Elite status.

He’s cashed for over $3.5 million in online MTT’s. In the early 2010’s, he started playing live events regularly as well. He collected an additional $655,796 in live tournament winnings. He won 6 APT (Asian Poker Tour) titles so far.

In 2017, he got signed by Natural8-GGNetwork to be an ambassador to the brand and a member of Natural8 Team Hot.

– Key Career Dates –

• 2008: He starts playing online poker tournaments on PokerStars under the screen name “shinbunshi”.
• 2013: He finishes 4th in the $1.050 No Limit Hold’em SCOOP event for $106,320. That is the biggest single online tournament cash of his career to date.
• 2016: He finishes 3rd in the HK$25,000 No Limit Hold’em- ACOP Warm-up Event at the Asia Championship of Poker in Macau for $83,296. That is the biggest single live tournament cash of his career to date.
• 2017: He joins the Natural8 Team Hot ambassadors.

– Kosei Ichinose’s Career –

His first 3 live cashes were between 2006 and 2009, and he only started truly gaining attention in 2012. Before this time, Ichinose was honing his talents at the online tables, where he operated under the name “shinbunshi”on PokerStars, and ‘shimbunshi’ on Full Tilt. He had 10 recorded five figure online scores, and was the first Japanese player to reach Supernova Elite.

Because of these outstanding results, PokerStars took notice. In January 2015, they made him a member of Team Pro, making Ichinose the very first member from Japan. Since then, his online name had changed to K. Ichinose.

In June 2017, however, Ichinose left Stars to join the up-and-coming fresh poker operator from Asia, Natural8. He’s been a member of the Natural8 Team Hot Ambassadors ever since.

Kosei’s first significant live cash came at a side event in the Macau Poker Cup, where he won US$24,812. Soon after, a 400th place at the WSOP Main Event followed, adding over US$28,000 to his career cashes. In March 2013, he won the APPT Seoul High Roller event for US$46,918. He followed that result up with a 5th place at the Macau Poker Cup a month later, for over US$25,000. He rounded the year off with 4th place at WPT Korea, for US$28,500. February 2014 saw him take 1st place in the APT Cebu High Roller, which added a further US$29,292 to his all time winnings.

In November 2016, he took 3rd place in the HK$25,000 No Limit Hold’em – ACOP Warm-up Event at the Asia Championship of Poker in Macau. He won US$83,296, which is the biggest single live tournament score of his career to date.

As for online poker, his biggest score is US$106,320 for a 4th place finish in the US$1,050 NLHE event at the 2013 SCOOP (Spring Championship of Online Poker) on Stars.

In 2020, when the dreaded coronavirus pandemic forced all WSOP events to be played online, Ichinose cashed in 9 different WSOP Online events on Natural8-GGNetwork. The biggest cash out of those 9 was US$35,483, which he got for coming in 4th place in the US$1,500 No Limit Hold’em Championship event.

Later that year, in October 2020, he took down the WPT Cambodia Online Championship on Natural8 for US$82k, a personalised trophy and WPT passports worth HK$10k.

Kosei Ichinose is widely respected as one of the best Japanese poker players to have arrived on the Asian poker scene over the last 5 years.