Annette Obrestad's win at the World Series of Poker's first "main event" held outside of the United States - which was also one of the largest buy-in tournaments in WSOP history - has mainstream media websites buzzing about this 18 year-old woman's victory.
The reason is that Obrestad looks every bit her age (maybe even younger). Her victory at the first WSOP Europe championship event is truly historic given both her age and gender.
Besides shattering the record for youngest poker player to win a WSOP bracelet by more than two years (she turns 19 next week), she also passed Annie Duke's record for the woman with the most money won in WSOP events. Duke has just more than $1 million.
Duke also won $2 million at the 2004 Tournament of Champions, which is an invitation-only event sponsored by Harrah's. When she won that event, she held the record for the largest tournament poker prize won by a woman.
Obrestad broke both records - the second by a little more than $13,000, as she took home the top prize of $2,013,102 - when she won the bracelet in London yesterday . Please click here to read the recap of that event.
News organizations outside of the poker press have noticed. Today, stories appeared on CNN.com, Bloomberg.com, Aftenposten (a Norwegian paper), and in a few other places. It will be interesting to see how much "legs" this story picks up once word gets out that an 18-year-old won one of the major events of 2007.
Obrestad has already achieved a cult following in Internet poker circles. She is an extremely successful online player who continues to amaze the online railbirds with her play. (She recently won a 180-person sit-and-go without looking at her holecards the entire time. Click here to read about that in an interview she did with Card Player.)
Obrestad is also an inspiration to many young poker players around the world because she claims she started her bankroll by playing in freerolls before she had a bank account. Click here to see an interview she did for Card Player TV.
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