Back in 2007 Annette Obrestad managed to win a tournament at PokerStars without ever looking at her hole cards. The poker pro has now stated she is going to try the feat again in the upcoming Bluff Europe Poker Academy which will take place in London at the Victory Casino in May.
Obrestad will make the attempt during the Poker Academy Boot Camp series of lectures. The boot camp will begin on May 8th and will see Obrestad, Neil Channing and Nik Persaud displaying one on one hand analyses for attendees. The boot camp will cover such topics as variance, bankroll management, flop texture analyzing and visualizing range equity calculations.
Tickets to the event start at just £600 and they can be purchased at the Bluff Europe poker academy website. A satellite will also take place on May 4th which will cost only £36. One ticket will be given away for every 600 in the prize pool, and at least one seat is guaranteed to the poker academy.
Obrestad first made a name for herself when she was just eighteen and won the tournament without looking at a single hole card. The poker community was astounded even though there was no video of the $4 180 person tournament. Obrestad played the tournament with a Post-It note covering her cards and then submitted the hand history to the PokerXFactor which is a popular training site.
Members of the site can view the tournament in a replayer. Obrestad stated the point of her experiment was to prove that the position, betting patterns and attention paid to the opponents were more important than the cards in No Limit Hold’em.
Obrestad did say that she looked at her cards one time during the tournament when she was facing an all in bet from a competitor. The hand history on PokerXFActor shows that Obrestad open folded on pocket kings on the fourth hand of the tournament and she open folded on pocket aces later on. Both folds came when she was under the gun in the hands.
Obrestad has an impressive record. She has already won $2.7 million in live tournament cashes and back in 2007 she won the World Series of Poker Europe Main Event just before she turned nineteen. Obrestad won $2.1 million for taking first place and this win took her to claim the title of the highest paid female player in a single payout.
Obrestad will now be able to compete in the World Series of Poker since she turned twenty one last year. It will be very interesting to see Obrestad compete in the Main Event and she has the potential to go very far, even win the competition.
But most of all it will be interesting to see if she will be able to win the tournament at the poker academy while not looking at her hole cards. It is amazing she was able to do it once but to do it twice would be a remarkable feat.