Poker News from Around the world

Lots of bits and pieces from the wide world of poker. Let's start with one of online poker's biggest stars and best players...

Anette Obrestad aka Anette15 aka The Huntress? Heard of her? You know who she is... The girl who played a poker tournament without looking at her hole cards and won. The girl that never deposited money online and built her bankroll to millions by starting off in freerolls and working her way up from micro stakes.

The online poker superstar that just turned 21 and will now be kicking butt in the World Series of Poker and decimating the ancient 22 and 23 year olds that used to dominate. Yeah, she's good. Well, she just won a Pot Limit Omaha tournament. Yeah, the girl is not only one of the world's best online No Limit Texas Hold 'Em players apparently she's well rounded and better than you at Pot Limit Omaha too.

Anette Obrestad is the queen of the new age of poker player, the online poker player that we profile here at Online Poker Player. She's good. She's also been on Poker After Dark recently holding her own. If that show was on say six years ago, not only would she have been 15 (Anette15) and presumably starting to learn poker but likely the next player would have been getting a lot more invites than he's currently gotten.

Speaking of online poker, if not for it, TJ Cloutier may not have found himself in a position where he needed to sell one of his World Series of Poker bracelets. Some would say the toll of a craps habit may have more to do with his financial distress than the new breed of players but poker hasn't gotten any easier and many of the old guard have quietly disappeared into the shadows. No longer are they crushing tournaments with strategies that are at best outdated and at worst predictable and obvious.

The poker boom was a boon to many, but after a few years of trying to wade through enormous fields, those players that couldn't adapt or find a sponsor, soon found their bankrolls drying up. TJ's a great guy and a terrific storyteller about poker but the fact he is putting his bracelet up for sale shows you how quickly poker can turn on even its best players.

Cloutier's bracelet is 14 karat gold. It's from his 2005 $5,000 No Limit Hold 'Em championship. Cloutier had to beat 466 players to win the totem, apparently bidders have to beat none, because nobody has placed a bid on Cloutier's memento yet.

Speaking of old school vs. new, Jeff Madsen the youngster who was recently crowned World Series of Poker player of the year is mixing it up with Doyle Brunson in regard to politics. Brunson is a guy who has no qualms adapting to new technologies and started the recent hubub by posting an Obama joke on twitter. Something along the lines of "The Dems keep telling us to give the President time. I'm all for it, how's 10 to 20."

Madsen took the bait and went after Doyle's politics a little bit. Whippersnappers never learn. Doyle informed the kid that he too used to be in favor of handouts but now he's all for people earning their own money. A few followers threw the racist card at Doyle and he protested. Good little controversy though.

Normally the online poker player would rather support the online poker player but in this fight it's hard to pick who is the live player and who is the online player. Both have bigger successes playing live but both are tied to online sites. Since Doyle has his own site we'll call him the online guy despite being the old-school of the two.