Former World Series of Poker Europe Main Event champion, Annette Obrestad, made mainstream news recently when a Betfair ad featuring her was banned in the UK for potentially encouraging underage gambling.

The advertisement apparently ran into trouble with the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) when it signed its tagline, "Online experience is measured in games, not years.  Join the new breed."  with Annette's well known screen name, "Annette_15."

Although Annette is now 20, the ASA apparently felt the "15" in her screen name implied she was 15 when she played, which could be seen as particularly attractive to underage viewers of the email banner ad. 

Although Betfair disagreed with the ASA assessment of the situation, they agreed that Annette should not have been featured in the ad in the first place, due to an agreed upon ASA code that discourages anyone under the age of 25 to be used to promote gambling, and therefore apologized for the error.


Story by Mark Anderson