Charlie Carrel prides himself on his ability to make exceptional live reads. In this hand on PokerGO’s Game of Gold he was heads-up against twitch streamer Lukas Robinson. When they both ended up on the river with just queen-high, will Charlie be able to sniff out the bluff by Lukas?
When you flop a flush draw heads-up that isn’t the nut flush draw, it is usually a good idea to bet, because not only do you get your opponent to fold hands that have some equity, but you also begin to build the pot for when you do hit your flush.
Charlie Carrel “Epiphany77” is a professional poker player from England and has over $9,600,000 in live tournament earnings with his biggest cash of £1,600,000 coming at a Triton Poker Super High Roller Series London in a £50,000 tournament. Charlie is a strong believer in live reads & live tells at the poker table and regularly explains his decision-making based on them. He is widely known to be against the Game Theory Optimal (GTO) approach to poker, often saying ‘F#&K GTO’ in his YouTube videos. Instead, he focuses on exploitable poker strategies. Charlie’s big break came in 2014 when he took down the PokerStars Sunday Million for over $200,000. He is good friends with high-stakes tournament poker player Ben Heath.
Lukas Robinson “RobinPoker” is a professional poker player from England. He has over $50,000 in live tournament earnings. He is known for being the first PokerNews ambassador, a role that sees him streaming online poker on Twitch. He made a name for himself in 2021 when he became the first poker player to stream his poker sessions for over 1,000 hours across 100 consecutive days.
Filmed in Seoul, South Korea and hosted by experienced poker broadcaster Ali Nejad, Game of Gold combines high stakes poker with survival reality TV. Over the course of the 12 episodes, the sixteen participants competed across various poker formats, including Sit & Go’s, Heads-Up games, Indian Poker and a standard tournament poker game.
The poker players on the show included Daniel Negreanu “KidPoker”, Jason Koon, Fedor Holz “CrownUpGuy”, Kevin Martin, Kyna England, Josh Arieh, Daniel Cates “Jungleman”, Lukas Robinson “RobinPoker”, Nikita Luther, Charlie Carrel “Epiphany77”, Johan Guilbert “YoH ViraL”, Olga Iermolcheva, David Williams, Andy Tsai “Andy Stacks”, Michael Soyza, and Maria Ho.
Round 2 was the heads-up team battle part of the show – There were 4 teams with three players on each team. After one match, the losing team would put up their next poker player. After one team had lost 3 matches they would be eliminated to the losers bracket with the winning team advancing to the winners bracket. The 3 players on the losing team from the losers bracket would be eliminated from the show.
The final six players competed in a winner-take-all format Sit & Go (SNG). This was unique as it meant there was no Independent Chip Model (ICM) pressure on any of the poker players.
Game of Gold Results
1st: Maria Ho – U.S.A – $456,000
2nd: Daniel Cates ‘Jungleman’ – U.S.A – $0
3rd: Johan Guilbert ‘Yoh Viral’ – France – $0
4th: Fedor Holz ‘CrownUpGuy’ – Germany – $0
5th: Kyna England – U.S.A – $0
6th: Josh Arieh – U.S.A – $0
Preflop:
With blinds at 20,000/40,000, Charlie Carrel calls with Q8 of clubs, and Lukas Robinson checks his option with Q2o from the big blind, which is the button in heads-up play.
Flop – 9c 4c 3h:
The nine-high flop offers no assistance to either player. After both poker pros check, they head to the turn.
Turn – 7s:
The 7 of spades on the turn completes the badugi board, but once again neither player fires and they both check with queen-high.
River – 5h:
The 5 of hearts on the river completes a four-card straight. This time Robinson decides to overbet for 100,000 into the 80,000 pot. Carrel prides himself on his live reads, but can he find the correct call here? Or will Robinons’ huge bluff get through? Stay to the end of this poker video to find out!
Jonathan Little analyzes live poker hands from TV poker shows such as Poker After Dark, Hustler Casino Live, The Lodge Poker Club & PokerGO. He also analyzes popular poker vloggers such as Rampage Poker, Brad Owen, Jaman Burton, Ashley Sleeth, Wolfgang Poker and others!
You will also find many poker hands on this channel that contain some of the biggest names in the poker world such as; Daniel Negreanu, Phil Hellmuth, Phil Ivey, Doug Polk, Garrett Adelstein, Tom ‘Durrrr’ Dwan, Dan ‘Jungleman’ Cates, Fedor Holz & many more!