“I was so nervous.”
Annette Obrestad might have looked poised and serene on stream in the recent WSOPE Main Event in Prague, but she wasn’t feeling it.
This was her first major tournament in nine years.
And, for a while, it looked like she might complete one of poker’s most unlikely comebacks, nearly two decades after winning the first WSOPE Main Event.
“I didn’t have any expectations,” she says. “Honestly, I didn't have any. I just wanted to come and have a good time. I didn't know how I’d stack up against today's tournament field, because I hadn't played for so long.
“The biggest tournament I played in the last nine years was a $400 Venetian. So to jump into a $5K, I had no idea how it was going to go.”
It went better than anyone expected.
The 2007 champion finished 35th from a field of 2,617, the last woman standing in a run that surprised her more than anyone.
Calm on the outside
Back in December, Obrestad wasn’t sure anyone would notice her return.
She was wrong.
Her first session back was a $1/$2 game at South Point in Las Vegas. Within 10 minutes, five people had already recognized her.
“Oh really?” she thought. “Holy crap. Like, how do these people still know?”
It’s something she’s still processing.
“I feel like I know it more now than I did back then,” she says. “When I started playing again, I didn't think anybody would care. I didn't want people to care. I just wanted to play poker again and have fun. It brings pressure.”
Pressure is something that doesn’t get talked about a lot at the top. But it’s there.
If you watched the livestream from Prague, you'd have seen Obrestad slip back into the exact same routine she had when she burst onto the scene in 2007.
Measured. Methodical. Focused. And confident. But that’s not how she was feeling.
“I did not feel as calm as I did back then, that's for sure,” she says. “I was even nervous playing a freaking $1/$3 game, you know?”
There was nowhere to hide in Prague. Obrestad was on stream as much as anyone in the field, and the cameras bring their own unique pressure to bear on what was already a nerve-wracking situation.
Her routine was her shield.
“Just because you're feeling nervous, it doesn't mean that other people see it,” she says. “You’ve just got to make sure your hands aren't shaking too much. That's one of the reasons I wear sunglasses and keep the same poise all the time, so I don’t deviate.”
Obrestad wasn’t helped by the chairs on the feature tables – something that other players, like Shaun Deeb, had also been vocal about. For Obrestad, they brought a unique problem.
“They were really bad,” she laughs. “Like, me being short, my feet were dangling. I would have been sitting like a little baby if I’d had my chair all the way down.”
Poker has changed
It wasn’t just her nerves and the furniture that Obrestad had to deal with in Prague. She also had to contend with the Europeans.
She used to be one herself, but after 16 years in Vegas, things feel different.
“Oh my god, the playing styles are so different,” she admits. “I guess the biggest thing I noticed in this tournament was just how aggressive people were. I used to be that person, you know?”
It meant she had to be patient. "I didn't want to get into a 6-bet war preflop for my tournament life. That would have been stupid."
But she still found spots to push back.
Patrick Leonard celebrated one of them after Obrestad raised with Q7 offsuit from UTG+2.
“That’s funny,” she says. “That was one of the loosest opens I made the whole tournament. The table was playing really tight, and I just thought I could get away with opening a lot. But that was not something that I was doing every orbit, you know?”
The hand that ended her run
Two of the big hands Obrestad lost on her final day were hero calls that she made, thinking that players’ ranges were wider than they were.
“Maybe I was just on the wrong side of their ranges,” she ponders. “I just ended up making the wrong decision both times.”
But she was also aware her image meant she could get paid off if she picked up hands.
You can’t just sit and wait, though. And late on her final day, one hand changed everything.
Here’s how she remembers it:
“Under the gun min-raised to 200K, middle position called – and I’d played with him earlier. He was playing loads of hands, doing crazy stuff. I was next to act with K7 suited and made it 690K."
The original raiser folded. Middle position called.
“The flop is 7-8-3, and he leads for 350K. I'm thinking, ‘You're so full of shit, you don't have anything.’ I thought about shoving but decided to let him keep barreling."
The turn brought a jack. Both players checked. The river was a deuce.
“Now he bets 1.25 million. Wow. And I have, like, 700K left if I call. I just didn't believe him."
She called, and he showed ace-jack.
“That is the only hand that he could possibly have that would make sense. And to lead that flop with ace-jack… the whole hand is just so weird. I feel like if that turn was anything else, I'd probably get him to do the same thing. It was unfortunate.”
Moments later, her run was over – but she wasn't done with the tournament. On the final two days of the livestream, Obrestad was in the YouTube chat, following every hand as Marius Kudzmanas went on to win the WSOPE bracelet.
A new relationship with the game
This was a rare foray back to Europe for Obrestad (“It’s just so far away”).
Vegas is her home now, and she admits that she can’t see herself living anywhere else. She says there’s something about seeing the sun every day that makes her happy, and that trading cold winters for the four or five months of extreme heat is an easy swap.
She’s just moved into a new apartment about a 10-minute drive from The Strip. She doesn’t drive – “my Ubers are cheaper now,” she jokes – but she’s settled into a life that suits her.
There is more travel on the horizon, though. Next up is the WSOP Circuit stop in Panama (May 7-17).
Rather charmingly, it turns out that she was invited to play in a televised $5K sit-and-go with some of the top qualifiers and a WSOP champion. She asked who the WSOP champion was. “Me? Oh, that’s cool.”
Obrestad is also planning on playing the WSOP in the summer but admits that her schedule will depend on whether she gets backing.
“I am talking to someone who's potentially going to be backing me in some tournaments,” she says.
“I don't want to jump into high-stakes events myself right now. I just couldn't imagine going on a $100K downswing and being okay with that. I really want to keep my life bankroll separate from my poker bankroll for a while.”
Playing for fun again
Without backing, she’ll play some $1,500s and the Main Event. But Obrestad doesn’t care much about adding to the bracelet she’s already got.
“I don't play for the prizes, for the prestige, or for being famous,” she says. “I don't care about the leaderboards or player of the year. I don’t care about any of that. I just want to play the tournaments that sound fun to me. That’s why I got back into the game, to have fun.”
And is she enjoying it so far?
“Oh my god, it's been a blast,” she says, eyes lighting up.
“The last few years before I stopped, all I wanted to do was go home when I was playing. I’d sit at a table and was thinking, ‘I can't wait to lose a flip, so I can just leave.’ That’s when you know you have to quit.”
“Playing again has been so much fun. I feel like I'm in the honeymoon phase again.”
Nine years after walking away, Obrestad has found her way back to the game on her own terms.
“All I want to do is play.”
