The Youngest Champions in Poker History

Players from our list today are united by one thing — they've proven that obsession with the game, strategic work, and the right environment can erase any age boundaries.

Annette Obrestad — the youngest holder of a WSOP Europe bracelet

• Started in poker: age 15 (2003)

• Record: Youngest WSOP bracelet holder in offline history (18 years and 364 days)

• Main title: WSOPE Main Event Champion (2007)

• Live tournament winnings: $3,996,713

Norwegian Annette Obrestad shattered the stereotype that conquering the poker Olympus requires huge money or connections. At 15, she created an account under the nickname "Annette_15," building her bankroll exclusively from freerolls. Her deep dive into psychology and analysis of other players' mistakes led her to a famous performance: Annette won an online tournament of 180 players while completely covering her cards on the monitor with a thick sticker — she made decisions based solely on her opponents' positions and bet sizes.

"I did this on mid-stakes constantly for training — it helps sharpen your instincts and situational awareness. But when I went really deep in that tournament, I desperately wanted to win with the screen covered, to show everyone: absolutely anything is possible in poker if you know how to read people and understand the structure of the game."

In 2007 in London, literally the day before her 19th birthday, Annette took down the WSOPE Main Event. The $2,013,733 win and the gold bracelet forever cemented her name in history, and this age record still stands unbroken.

After taking a break from poker for almost nine years, Annette became a successful beauty blogger and made the top 100 best Scrabble players in America. However, in 2026 she officially returned to the tables. Having restructured her mental approach to the game, Obrestad came to WSOP Europe 2026 in Prague, where she made a deep run in the Main Event, finishing in 34th place (€40,000), and in the summer took part in the WSOP Main Event 2026.

Viktor Blom — the legend of online cash

• Started in poker: age 14 (2004)

• Record: Created the most expensive action in online cash history at age 19 (2009)

• Main title: Champion of PokerStars Caribbean Adventure $100,000 Super High Roller (2012), SCOOP $10,300 Main Event (2013), and partypoker LIVE MILLIONS Germany Main Event (2018)

• Live tournament winnings: $7,724,813

Viktor was born in 1990 in Sweden. At 14, he was an ordinary teenager pushing chips with friends for a couple of kronor. As soon as he turned 18, the world of unlimited online poker opened up before him. Viktor dove headfirst into the game, regularly spending more than 10 hours a day at the monitor.

Blom started his breakthrough 2009 with a bankroll of $2,000. By September, he already had his first million dollars burning on his account. Hiding under the anonymous nickname "Isildur1," the 19-year-old Swede waged a real war at high stakes. Not knowing who was behind the avatar, poker legends like Phil Ivey and Tom Dwan lost millions in battles with him at 500/1,000 stakes. Blom won seven-figure sums per session and could lose his entire bankroll just as quickly. He didn't use software or trackers — his weapons were phenomenal visual memory, hyper-aggression, and adaptability.

Famous professional Phil Galfond analyzed the Blom phenomenon this way:

"Isildur's style was built on hyper-aggression. He found your psychological weaknesses, inflated pots to such a scale that opponents broke under the pressure. Blom learned right there during play. He could sit down to an unfamiliar discipline and within a couple of days play it at the level of the best regulars in the world. His intuition was frightening…

…but despite his millions in winnings, you can't say that Viktor fully realized his potential. Perhaps he should have spent more time working on himself and his vulnerabilities, but he just wanted to play poker."

Becoming the face of Phenom Poker, the Swede pulled off one of the most talked-about comebacks of modern times in April 2026. Making a deposit of $13,626, he ran it up over a month in mixed games to $3,771,319.

Lucas Jumalon — the young 2026 WSOP Main Event world champion

• Started in poker: 17-18 years old

• Record: WSOP Main Event 2026 Champion at age 22

• Main title: WSOP Main Event 2026 Champion 

• Live tournament winnings: $10,174,558

Lucas was introduced to the game at age 9, when his father took him to a home game table with his friends. The boy not only remembered the rules, but immediately took second place in his first mini-tournament, winning $80. Lucas quickly realized that poker is a game that requires a systematic approach. As a teenager, he was already training purposefully and playing local low-stakes tournaments in Washington and Oregon, and then for four years at GCU university he grinded with students 6-7 nights a week, honing his analytics. Before the summer of 2026, his biggest win was $22,945.

His journey through the WSOP Main Event 2026 among 9,208 entrants resembled a sports thriller. At the end of Day 2, Jumalon had a critical stack of 12 big blinds. The guy was one step from elimination, but showed patience and managed to build it back up.

Lucas arrived at the final table as the absolute chip leader and never once lost the chip lead throughout the entire final stage, suppressing his opponents with aggression. In heads-up, it took him only 17 hands to close out Finland's Lauri Saaskilahti and become the owner of $10,000,000 and the coveted gold bracelet at age 22.

Adrian Mateos — 6-time WSOP champion

• Started in poker: age 16

• Record: Youngest holder of 3 WSOP bracelets in history (22 years old).

• Main title: 6-time WSOP champion, WSOPE Main Event (2013), winner of the Triton Montenegro Invitational (2026),

• Live tournament winnings: $69,854,883

Spaniard Adrian Mateos proved that while one early score might be a fluke, consistent dominance is a built system. Adrian came to poker from tennis. The teenager quickly discovered he had strong mathematical abilities, which fit perfectly with the logic of the game.

As soon as he turned 18, he registered an account under the nickname "Amadi_017" and started from the very bottom. He grinded cheap online tournaments for €1-€3, quickly turning them into his first €600. He invested all this capital into a local live tournament in Madrid with a €600 buy-in and took the win — €33,000! Returning online, Adrian caught his main financial springboard at the spring SCOOP series, where he won more than €100,000.

Adrian himself described his training regimen during that period this way:

"By age 18, I had accumulated a lot of hours of theory. I studied poker around the clock, played, watched videos, recordings of final tables, tried to copy the styles of other players who played better than me. Basically I still do something similar, I just study the game more in solvers now. But I still try to copy the styles of good players. And I keep discussing hands with other strong players. That's the only way to improve in poker."

Convincing his parents to give him exactly one year off from university to pursue his dream, Mateos moved to London with other players to grind and study theory. It was from London that 19-year-old Mateos went to France for the WSOPE, won, and earned his first €1,000,000.

By 2026, the 31-year-old Spaniard had firmly cemented his status as a legend, winning the WSOP $250,000 Super High Roller tournament, taking home $4.3 million in prize money and his 6th gold bracelet.

Fedor Holz — the man who became the best player in the world everywhere at once

• Started in poker: age 17

• Record: The only player in history to simultaneously lead the world live tournament ranking and the ranking of the best online players on the planet

• Main title: 2-time WSOP champion, 5-time Triton Poker series champion, winner of the WCOOP $5,200 Main Event (2014)

• Live tournament winnings: $50,681,510

As a teenager, Fedor Holz, born in Saarbrücken, was the classic "whipping boy" in his social circle. On weekends, he and his friends would gather at home and hold multi-hour poker marathons for penny stakes. A couple of guys from this group were already winning thousands of euros online and consistently beating Fedor. This got under Holz's skin, and instead of getting upset and giving up on cards, he decided to figure out the logic behind their wins.

At first Fedor tried to combine occasional poker sessions with university studies. However, it quickly became clear: he couldn't sit on two chairs at once. Risking everything, he withdrew his documents from the university and gathered a team of equally young and ambitious players around him. This environment helped each of them deal with career downswings and keep growing. Having moved to Vienna with like-minded people, Holz began training in $1 online tournaments for 180 players. To get reps, build volume, and reduce the element of bad luck, Fedor grinded, opening up to 20 tables at once.

The team's hard work paid off in September 2014. At 21, Holz fought through a field of 2,142 entries in an important online tournament — the WCOOP $5,200 Main Event. Upon reaching the final table, at the 6-max stage the participants made an ICM deal. Having secured himself the largest payout, Fedor went on to win the final heads-up against Brazil's Yuri Martins and took home a total of $1,300,000 along with the championship title. Having built his bankroll, the "German Machine" transferred his skills to live play.

At age 23, Holz put together a stretch that sports analysts recognized as the hottest upswing in live poker history. In 2016 alone, he set an offline record, winning $16,484,153. He took home the gold bracelet from the WSOP $111,111 High Roller for One Drop charity tournament ($4.9 million) and the trophy for the Triton Super High Roller Series $200,000 Main Event in the Philippines ($3 million). And Holz's personal offline record still stands at $6,000,000, earned for second place in the millionaire Big One for One Drop in 2018.

Holz formulates his philosophy this way:

"Success in poker is not a matter of luck in one hand. It's a matter of building the right mental structure and surrounding yourself with people who are smarter than you."

"Collective strategy breakdown saves years of solo work. A technical GTO foundation is necessary as a defensive strategy against strong regulars, but ranges don't need to be memorized blindly. Logic is always more important for a poker player than rote memory. You have to constantly analyze your played sessions — without routine hand review, growth is impossible."

In 2026, 33-year-old Holz, who announced his poker "retirement" long ago for the sake of family and business, came to the Triton Poker series in Montenegro and casually took down the $40,000 Mystery Bounty tournament, adding $1,208,811 to his balance.

Read also:
The Story of Fedor Holz

Artur Martirosyan — Russia's leading high roller

• Started in poker: age 17

• Record: Went from micro-stakes player to high roller in 3 years.

• Main title: Four-time WSOP champion, 3-time Triton Poker series champion

• Live tournament winnings: $35,780,116

An ordinary student from Voronezh, Artur began his poker journey at age 17. To open an online account, he even had to fudge his age a bit, for which his first profile was quickly banned. At that time, Artur lived in a spartan routine: waking up at 7 am, a minibus ride, classes, a short nap, and grinding late into the night.

There were no major wins for the first three years, and poker schools refused to take on a newcomer with no experience. To finally build a solid foundation, in 2017 Martirosyan entered the Spin&Go discipline. Signing a contract with a backer, he played 15,000 tournaments at stakes from $7 to $15. This volume laid the foundation of his basic understanding of the game. Having fully worked through all the stakes in spins, by 2019 Artur changed direction, moving into MTTs.

Registering under the nickname mararthur1 in online Blade tournaments with a $25,000 buy-in, the 22-year-old won three expensive tournaments in three days and secured his first win exceeding $1,000,000. In March 2021, being the youngest participant at the final table, he took down the EPT Sochi Main Event, and in August in Cyprus he outplayed David Peters in a heads-up duel in the SHRB Europe tournament and took home $1,400,000.

Today, 29-year-old Artur Martirosyan officially holds first place on Russia's All Time Money List. In 2026, Artur became "Player of the Year" for the Triton Poker series, and in June 2026 in Las Vegas the Russian won his fourth WSOP gold bracelet.

The stories of these players prove the main thing — there are no "chosen ones" in poker. Each of them started under the same conditions. But while the industry used to be chaotic, and players had to move blindly and take risks, now young players have a solid alternative.

Today, beginning players no longer need to risk their own money. To get started, all you need is the desire to learn, develop skills, and earn from the game. The FunFarm poker school takes care of all the main concerns. We finance your play, teach you strategy, and thoroughly break down mistakes in training sessions with professionals.