Annette Obrestad started playing poker at an age when most girls were getting stress ulcers from waiting for the high school QB to ask them to the senior prom. The game quickly consumed her and she began to play poker with the same sort of passion that most young ladies usually reserve for shoes or chocolate. With less then a thousand days experience in the game Annette was one of the most feared multi-table tournament players in cyberspace and was also the unlikely owner of a World Series of Poker bracelet.
Annette's victory at the World Series of Poker Europe makes her the youngest player in the history of the storied event to win one of the coveted pieces of jewelry. The only thing that probably kept her from doing this at an earlier age was the fact that she was too young to enter a casino, and that she would have had to cut algebra to do it. All joking aside, the young Norwegian's success in the sport is the triumph of nature over nurture. Annette simply was born with "it". Many players have tried to find whatever the elusive "it" is in books on pot odds, expensive poker camps, and community college classes on psychology. Thousands of these people, many of them respected players in the sport, have spent decades chasing the sort of success that has come so quickly to this talented newcomer. Outside of her World Series of Poker success, Annette has also finished 7th at PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker's $2,500 main event. She survived a fury of controversy when she admitted that she allowed somebody else to play for her. Considering the talent Annette brings to the table, her not playing just gave everyone else a better chance of victory. In relative terms, this is like Peyton Manning letting somebody from the audience take a few snaps as Quarterback. In 2007, she was part of a rather odd experiment where she played an entire sit-n-go tournament without ever looking at her cards. This may sound like charging into battle while wearing only a chiffon gown and an arrogant sense of invincibility. She was trying to show the importance that position plays in the game. Considering the fact that she won the tournament, one would have to conclude that she proved her theory. Annette Obrestad's short career has been nothing but a study in success. It will be a while before we see if we are dealing with a Tiger Woods style phenomenon, but it should be fun to watch.
