22-year-old Charlie Carrel deposited $14 into an online game account, and while for most people they’d soon lose their paltry $14 and never return to online poker again, Charlie got lucky and managed to turn his $14 into $2.1 million only two years later. On his first play-through he managed to turn $14 into $30, which is what Charlie says kept him going rather than taking the money and running. According to Mirror,
He said: “I was brought up in a household that didn’t have a lot of money, so I was taught the value of it from very early on.
“Had I not won that first tournament I would never have deposited again, and none of this would have happened.”
A college drop-out who only attended Warwick University for ten weeks before quitting, Charlie now plays online as well as live games across the world, allowing him to travel to cities like Amsterdam and Miami for “work.” He’s very infrequently alone though – after winning $189,000 at the Sunday Million poker tournament rather than spend the money solely on himself, Charlie took 15 of his friends on an all-expenses paid trip to a luxury hotel in Amsterdam.
He said: “I have to pinch myself most days. I think about depositing that £10 a lot. It could easily have happened so differently for me.
“I think I have the potential to be one of the top players in the world. There are not too many people I would be worried about playing.”(via)
Charlie was even crowned “Poker Listings’ Rising Star” in September, and while $189,000 sounds like a lot of money it’s not anywhere near the most he’s ever won at a tournament – that award goes to winning the European Poker Tournament High-Roller Grand Final in Monte Carlo last May. He made $1.1 million.
As for the people he left back home, Charlie’s mother Jacqui says that she’s proud of what her son has been able to achieve and that “He started off with a tenner and never, ever, dipped into a different pot.”
[H/T Mirror]