Massively popular YouTuber Masato Yokosawa (a.k.a. World Wide Yokosawa) is chasing EPT glory while showcasing poker to millions of fans

---

In terms of subscriber numbers, the YouTube channel ‘World Wide Yokosawa’ might just be one of the largest in the world to come from a solo content creator. 

The man behind it is Japan’s Masato Yokosawa, a talented poker player turned content creator who started the channel just five years ago. In that time, he’s amassed an enormous following of 750,000 subscribers and racked up millions of views (his most popular video has 4.5 million views).

And the 30-year-old has achieved this YouTube success while simultaneously recording just shy of a million dollars in live poker cashes.

WORLD WIDE YOKOSAWA

If you’ve never seen a World Wide Yokosawa video before, it might be slightly different to what you’re used to from other poker vlogs.

“I always say, our channel is not like a poker vlog because most poker players make videos about playing poker, the strategy and the hands,” Yokosawa tells us on a break during the Paris leg of the European Poker Tour (EPT).

“But our channel is not like that. We’re always travelling, eating food, showing leisure and stuff like that. We like to show the lifestyle of a poker player.”

And millions of people in Japan and around the world love to watch. 

In 2021, Yokosawa won the Poker Personality award at the Global Poker Awards and this week his lifestyle brought him to the French capital.

THE EPT QUEST

“So far, so good,” he says when asked about his EPT Paris trip. “It’s been very fun. I played twice on the TV table and I just love playing there. The EPT streaming game is the best streaming poker tournament in the world, so I’m just honoured to play there.”

Yokosawa finished 97th in the Main Event, good for €14,100, and is now battling in the €10K High Roller.

But he came here for one reason: to win an EPT title. 

That’s because Yokosawa is on a quest to win poker’s triple crown, which consists of an EPT title, a World Series of Poker (WSOP) title, and a World Poker Tour (WPT) title.

He’s already got the WPT win. Back in 2013, Yokosawa took down the WPT Jeju Main Event for $100K, which remains the largest score of his career to date. Since then, he’s enjoyed cashes at the EPT and WSOP, and even travelled to the Bahamas for the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure and PokerStars Players Championship, but a title has so far eluded him.

“I’m really focused on the EPT and WSOP,” he admits. “But WSOP is only in the summer, so I’ll be following every EPT event. I’m always checking the EPT schedule!”

INSPIRING THE NEXT GENERATION

While he’s rewriting what it means to be successful in poker vlogging, the first chapter in Yokosawa’s poker story begins like so many others: home games with friends. Around the age of 20, his group would get together for a regular game, despite none of them really knowing how to play.

Nevertheless, Yokosawa felt confident right from the start. In fact, he felt like he was born to play poker from the very first hand he played.

Now, through his YouTube content, he hopes to inspire as many people as possible to play the game he fell in love with.

“I’ve met so many Japanese players here [at EPT Paris] who told me they watched my channel and started to play poker because of it, and now they’re here,” he says, a huge smile on his face. “Not all Japanese poker fans can come to other countries to play, so I want to show them all the entertainment from cities like Paris.

“We’re always happy to make new poker players. That is the most meaningful thing for me. It’s the best part of having my YouTube channel.”

You can watch all episodes of World Wide Yokosawa here.

More about EPT Paris:

• EPT Paris coverage hub
• European Poker Tour (EPT) homepage
• EPT Paris schedule
• EPT Paris results

Back to Top