Annette Obrestad

Biography

Annette Obrestad is a Norwegian Poker prodigy having started playing online poker at the age of fifteen.  Obrestad, who was brought up in a small town called Sandnes in Norway played under her popular online nickname, annette_15. She claims that she has never used her own money to payroll her online poker pursuits with her first deposit coming through a friend. Since then she has managed to payroll herself through her winnings. Soon she went on to win several games and made several hundred thousand dollars in winnings through online poker. Shortly after which, she entered the world of live poker tournaments. At hardly 25 years of age, she has already made her mark having won nearly USD 4 Million in live tournament earnings and still counting.

Given her age, Obrestad could not go over to the United States to play poker. Hence, her moment of fame came when the Inaugural edition of the World Series of Poker European main event was held in 2007. She won the poker tournament, smashing several records in that victory including the highest payout to a female player ever at USD 2.01 Million, beating the previous best of Annie Duke by just a whisker.

She was also the youngest player to earn a bracelet at just 18 years of age, turning 19 just the day after the main event. Her debut at the WSOPE was littered with numerous other smaller accomplishments such as eliminating the top two female players from the game during the third day of play and was among the top five chip leaders by the End of Day’s play. Obrestad also claims to have won an online sit and go Poker event against 180 players without seeing her hole cards. Obrestad claimed to have taped up her screen to prevent herself from seeing the hole cards and even her hand.

She could not play in Las Vegas until 2009 due to the age limit in practice of 21 years. Hence she played several European Tours like the EPT and the WSOPE and even came close to winning an EPT bracelet in 2007. Obrestad was signed up by Betfair right after her first major win in 2007. She later joined Full Tilt Poker in 2010 and now represents Lock Poker.

Poker Career Highlights