It's not a lottery win time and time again it takes work to get to the top, just like in any other game.

What they didn't cover, though, is what it took to get to that point. He turned his $39.84 into $1,328.07, then a bit more, then a bit more, and eventually a whole lot more. This part of Carrel's story is something that was covered by those tabloid articles. Carrel's story is the same: he made a $13.27 deposit on a poker website, won his first tournament for $39.84 and has never had to deposit again. Often, beginner's luck strikes and that initial success evolves into a passion that they focus all their time and energy on.

Then comes a small deposit on an online site. But the one thing he didn't get bored of was poker.Īsk any professional poker player under 30 how they got into the game and you'll get a similar story it always starts with small games at home with friends. I'm grateful for that.'Ĭharlie bounced from hobby to hobby throughout his teens, focusing his attention on something until he got bored of it. A poker example would be how I never feel stressed if I'm on a final table. 'I created a defense mechanism-I can detach from my emotions. 'Having no more than one friend-shout out to my best friend, Matthew Pettit-for a long period of time definitely stunted my emotional and social development,' he says. Thing is, he says, all that bullying turned out to be kind of helpful. 'I was severely bullied for quite a large part of my childhood.' 'Intelligence and no social ability to hide it is not a great mix,' he admits. A smart kid, he endured the same thing a lot of smart kids are forced to endure: merciless bullying for a big chunk of his time at school. 'I can feel as though I played well, but human bias and emotions cloud judgment too heavily to really know.'Ĭarrelwas born in Jersey island in 1993 and lived there until he was seven, when his family uprooted to London. 'The beautiful thing is nobody knows how lucky they get for winning a tournament,' he says. He'd finished fifth in a tournament in Malta, Europe two months before, winning $205,000, and won a tournament in London in November of 2014, walking away with $144,000. 'I don't think they were very good at capturing anything about me.'Ĭarrel was already pretty well-established in the poker world before Monte Carlo. 'It was strange seeing my face everywhere for a while,' says Carrel, reflecting on articles that sprung up in places like the Sun and LadBible, which he felt described his success more like a lottery win than something that took years of practice and studying to achieve.

How old is poker