The youngest WSOP Europe Main Event champion Annette Obrestad has made a stunning return to the felt at the 2026 WSOPE Main Event. After an eight-year hiatus, Obrestad successfully navigated Day 3.
Annette Obrestad is back, and it feels as though she never stepped away from the table. During Day 3 of the record-breaking WSOPE Main Event, Obrestad participated in her first major tournament in eight years.
She immediately thrilled the rail with the high-level moves that allowed her to crush the competition during the early years of her career.
While she spent her recent time building a successful YouTube makeup channel and playing competitive Scrabble, her return to the poker world is undeniable.
As Day 3 progressed, the poker community had one primary question: just how deep could the original prodigy go?
Adapting to the Modern Poker Landscape
By the dinner break, Obrestad found herself with 24 big blinds and two grueling levels left to navigate. In an interview with Jeff Platt, she addressed whether the game had evolved significantly during her time away.
"I’ve definitely noticed a couple of things that I didn’t see on Day 1," Obrestad noted. "More aggression in general, people taking different lines, more 3-betting, and more 4-betting, but at the end of the day it’s still poker, and I feel like I can hang with them."
Manifesting Success with a Seven-Figure Stack
Obrestad seemed to be manifesting a golden result. Sporting five gold rings, gold nails, gold earrings, and gold-framed sunglasses, she looked every bit the champion.
As the field thinned to double digits in the final level, her stack began to rise. By the end of the night, only 85 players remained to bag their chips for Day 4. Only two women are left in the field, and both are heavy hitters with historic resumes.
Both players have already etched their names into WSOP history. Now, the world watches to see if either can reclaim the spotlight in the largest WSOPE Main Event ever held.