In 2007, Norwegian poker superstar Annette “Annette_15” Obrestad famously won a tournament on PokerStars without looking at her hole cards. Now she plans to attempt the unthinkable feat again at the upcoming Bluff Europe Poker Academy at the Victoria Casino in London.
Obrestad’s shot at history will come during the Poker Academy Boot Camp series of lectures, in conjunction with the online poker room BlackBeltPoker.com. The two-day boot camp kicks off on Saturday, May 8th and includes invaluable one-on one hand analysis with pros like Obrestad, Neil Channing, and Nik Persaud. Areas of discussion during the boot camp will include variance and bankroll management, analyzing flop textures, and visualizing range equity calculations.
Tickets for the event start at £600 and are available at BluffEurope.com/pokeracademy. There will also be a satellite to the event at the Victoria Casino on Tuesday, May 4th where players can win a ticket for as little as £36. One ticket to the event will be available for every £600 in the prize pool, with at least one seat guaranteed.
Obrestad became an instant poker legend at the age of 18 when word about her “no-peeking” victory hit the poker community. There is no actual video of the $4 180-man tournament, but Obrestad, who played the entire tournament with a Post-It note covering her cards, submitted the hand history to the popular training site PokerXFactor.com, where members can view the entire tournament in a replayer. The point of Obrestad’s experiment was to prove that position, betting patterns, and paying attention to opponents are more important than your cards in No Limit Hold’em.
Obrestad admitted that she peeked at her cards once during the tournament when facing an all-in bet from an opponent. For any doubters out there, the hand history reveals that she open-folded pocket kings on the fourth hand of the tournament. Then, in the later stages, a short-stacked Obrestad open-folded pocket aces. Both folds came while she was under-the-gun.
In addition to her famed online success, Obrestad has collected $2.7 million in live tournament earnings in her young career. In September 2007, she became the youngest bracelet winner ever by winning the inaugural World Series of Poker (WSOP) Europe Main Event the day before her 19th birthday. The $2.1 million prize edged the record for a single-event payout to a female player, set previously by UB.com’s Annie Duke when she won $2 million at the 2004 WSOP Tournament of Champions.
Obrestad, who turned 21 last September, will finally get her chance to play in the state-side WSOP when the series kicks off on May 28th at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. It is unknown how many tournaments the youngster is expecting to play, but the aforementioned Tournament of Champions would likely be on her schedule should she receive enough fan votes. Obrestad is among 50 bracelet winners that have received the most votes thus far, although only the Top 20 vote-getters will win entry into the Poker All-Star event. Voting for the 2010 Tournament of Champions is still open at WSOP.com/TOC.