Charlie Carrel has taken the online poker world by storm, amassing a fortune that has allowed him to enjoy lavish parties in Amsterdam as well as helping him support his parents financially.
He began his online money-making empire when he deposited £10 into a web poker account in 2013 – and soon won £1,000.
The gambler has four A* at A-level but quit university after just ten weeks and moved to Jersey to live with his grandmother in St Brelade to concentrate on his game.
He is now planning a special £4,500 yacht party for one of his best friend’s birthdays this weekend and said he has a ‘special surprise gift’ up his sleeve for his parents.
Mr Carrel added that his mother, Jacqui Carrel, and his step-father, Roy Everitt, who live in St Brelade, were initially worried about his gambling habits but he said they have now changed their mind.
But it nearly never happened. Mr Carrel, who is from London, admitted that had he not ‘got lucky’ on his first venture into the world of online gambling when he won around £30 he would have quit.
‘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,’ said Mr Carrel who first started playing small-stakes poker with his friends before he noticed he had a talent.
‘Had I not won that first tournament I would never have deposited again, and none of this would have happened. I suppose the first time I won really big was when I won $201,000.
‘It was really exciting but to be honest I went straight to bed. I’d been up for 14 or 15 hours playing – which is not really that long – but I had been drinking the night before with friends and I was a bit hung over.’
Mr Carrel has just returned from a poker trip to Malta where he won another $201,000 when he came fifth during a European Poker Tour Highroller competition. He said at the moment he was happy being a professional poker player but in the future he hoped to use his winnings to fund business ventures.
‘I have a business plan. I hope this can be a springboard for me in the future. I have known some guys go into property development so maybe I could do that in the future. I also want to do something for charity.’
But the poker star said he had lost money too and once blew around £20,000 in one night.
‘There is always a point that you can get to and need to walk away, a point where you need to stop. It definitely can be an addiction for some people.’
Jersey poker player George Clyde-Smith won nearly $100,000 at a major tournament in the Bahamas in 2013. The then-24-year-old paid $10 to enter an online competition and won a trip to a major tournament which saw him seated beside some of the top players in the world. Mr Clyde-Smith, who grew up on the border of Trinity and St Helier, finished 11th in the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure at the Atlantis Resort, Paradise Island.
Teenager Chris Dixon, from St John, revealed to the JEP earlier this year that he was earning a ‘six-figure’ salary for playing video games. The former Victoria College student became a YouTube sensation from posting videos of him playing the football game Fifa online. He amassed so many followers that advertisers were reportedly paying him huge sums of money to feature on his videos.
