21-Year-Old Woman Wins Bellagio Five Star EventAnna Wroblewski Turns $300 into $300,000-plus |
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Just one week ago, Anna Wroblewski was working a $10 an hour job she took to pay bills after a bad run at the poker tables. Yesterday, she became the only woman to win a preliminary event at the 2007 Bellagio Five Star World Poker Open when she won the $3,000 buy-in event that boasted a field of 324 players, generated a prize pool of just under $943,000, and awarded $337,395 to the winner.
She played through a star-studded field to make the final table. Once there, she eliminated Erick Lindgren in eighth place and online pro Peter Feldman in fourth. Despite entering the final table with the chip lead, Abel Meijberg finished in third place. Wroblewski began heads-up play against Jonathan Dull as nearly a 3-to-1 dog, but eventually gained the chip lead to clinch her first major title. The first-place finish also got her an entry into the $25,000 World Poker Tour Championship that's worth potentially millions more and a Bellagio gold bracelet.
"I'm just so happy, I can't stop smiling," Wroblewski said after clinching the title.
Here are the final table finishers:
Anna Wroblewski $337,395
Jonathan Dull $192,640
Abel Meijberg $96,320
Peter Feldman $55,025
Casper Hansen $32,105
Tom Koral $22,935
Erick Lindgren $18,345
Richard Talerico $14,677
Please click here to view the complete result's page.
At the age of 19, Wroblewski moved to Las Vegas to play poker. Like Phil Ivey and Kristy Gazes, she started playing in casinos underage. But after a rough go at the poker tables, she moved back to Chicago until she turned 21, only to return to Las Vegas to give poker another shot with a very limited bankroll.
She built it up only to go on a bad run, which most poker players do at some point in their careers. After her funds were nearly depleted, she took a $10 an hour job help pay bills for the time being. Her first week's paycheck was $300.
Wroblewski took nearly all that money and played a single-table winner-take-all satellite to get into the Bellagio Five Star World Poker Open $2,000 buy-in event. She won, and ended up finishing 16th for a little over $7,000. Then, Wroblewski used her winnings to enter event 9, parlaying her $300 into well over $300,000.
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