Annette Obrestad, 19, is one of the most remarkable people around this year at WSOP. She’s not among players here, as the minimum age to compete in the World Series of Poker in the U.S. is 21. Annette has to wait till September to be able to play in London at the second WSOP Europe to defend her title there: Annette is the reigning World Series of Poker Europe champion. To add to that, she’s the youngest Main Event champion and the first woman to win a Main Event. In her less than two years as a poker professional she has won more than $2.5 million.

She began with play money and freerolls and once she realized she was pretty good at it she began getting involved with small-stakes sit-n-gos. As the wins became more frequent, she raised the stakes and started playing four to eight tables at a time, and with real money. Of course, it trigged her high-school progress a great deal (which eventually ended up with a dropout), but speaks about it with a smile – her prize money was worth it, she was making more money playing poker than her parents were making at their full time job. Annette mentions that her poker success has nothing at all to do with math since she "always hated it and was never good at it."

Her first huge win came in a $500,000 Full Tilt tournament last August when she captured first place and earned $117,000. After that she participated in the live poker tournaments with similar success.

After cashing in four live events and collecting more than $40,000, she headed to the inaugural WSOP Europe. The aggressive style of play she worked out online worked just as well against some of the greatest names in the game.

Annette’s already got a contract from Betfair, and is absolutely happy with what she’s doing. She says she found her way in life and wants to stick to it for good.