High-stakes poker legend Charlie Carrel may be “retired” from playing the nosebleed games, but that’s not stopping him from going back to where it all began. The 24-year-old Briton is picking up where Doug Polk left off by starting his own micro-stakes bankroll challenge, and streaming it for fans to follow.
Carrel, who famously started with $15 in his poker account and ran it up to millions of dollars, is attempting to do it all again. Only this time he’s streaming it for all the world to see, so they can watch and learn how he does it.
Proving it’s not just about the money for him, Carrel has committed to a bankroll challenge in which he will start with a $50 deposit and turn it into $10,000, all while streaming live on Twitch.
He’s already played a couple of sessions and posted his thoughts.
If strategy is your thing, judging from his first post, Carrel is going to be putting on a poker clinic, dispensing invaluable, in-depth strategic advice, rather than focusing on entertaining viewers.
From Mean Streets to Fifth Street
With his long, floppy locks, laid-back smile and eye-grabbing shirts, Carrel was a beloved figure in the high-stakes scene for years before announcing he was stepping away from the game.
But it turns out that he wasn’t always such a lovable character. On the True Geordie Podcast, Carrol admitted to more nefarious means of making money before getting into poker.
“I got into drug dealing at one point in my life, and bought and sold Pokemon cards,” Carrell told the podcast.
Soon after, he found the game that would change everything. Under the name “Epiphany77,” he deposited $15 on PokerStars in 2013. It wasn’t long before he binked his first tournament – a 180-man sit-n-go.
After running his bankroll up to six figures in cash games, he had his first significant win by chopping the Sunday Million for $201,733 in January 2014.
When he hit the half-million mark, Carrel branched into live poker. His first big score was winning the $2,500 Grosvenor UK Poker Tour Final for $170,950. Less than a year later, he took the $1.2 million top prize at the $45,000 EPT High Roller event at Monte Carlo.
Since then, Carrel has a long list of six-figure live scores, while also winning the PokerStars SCOOP Main Event for $1.2 million. He’s amassed more than $6 million in winnings over his brief career.
True Micro-Stakes Challenge
Carrel isn’t the first to attempt the micro-stakes challenge. Jason Somerville attracted massive viewership on Twitch as he attempted to turn $50 into $10,000.
And of course, Doug Polk recently completed his $10k challenge after two years of grinding earlier this week. However, where Polk threw bankroll management out the window in his final hours in order to reach his goal, Carrel plans to stay disciplined.
He’s promising to stick to a 20-buy in rule, which means that he’ll move up to the next-highest stakes only when he has 20 buy-ins for that level. When he tumbles to 17 buy-ins at that level, he’ll move down.
He’s currently grinding $0.02/0.05 Zoom cash games, and at last check, had run his $50 up to $166.
