Carrel Bags Super High Roller Lead, Seeking Third EPT High Roller Title
Charlie Carrel finished with 1,129,000 in chips after eight one-hour levels on Day 1 of the PokerStars European Poker Tour Prague €50,000 Super High Roller. He'll be the chip leader heading to Day 2 of the event, but he still has plenty of work to do as more than half of the players survived the day and there's still entries allowed until Day 2 kicks off.
The tournament drew 46 entries on Day 1, putting it about on par with last year's 56 runners. Of those, 32 survived the day. Others joining Carrel near the top of the leaderboard were Julian Thomas (700,000), Patrick Leonard (617,000), Konstantin Uspenskiy (517,000), and Isaac Haxton (504,000).
Carrel busted about halfway through the day and then lost about half of his second 250,000-starting stack. He recovered in a big way, though, with the entry of Leon Tsoukernik contributing greatly to his cause. Carrel picked off a couple of Tsoukernik bluffs and then busted him to stack up past 500,000.
Then, Carrel picked up aces and put Max Silver all in on a completed board of queen-ten high board. Silver thought awhile on the river but couldn't get away from his eights.
Not much later, Tsoukernik reentered and drew the same seat, two to the right of his nemesis. Carrel and Tsoukernik shared drinks from a €600 bottle of whiskey, but when it came to chips, it was still Carrel doing the taking. He bet a completed board of 
with ace-jack and then called a check-raise from Tsoukernik, who couldn't beat the jacks.
Carrel's big day has put him in position to try to add a third EPT high roller to his collection. He won the €25,500 event at the EPT Grand Final last year for over €1.1 million and then won the €10,200 High Roller at EPT Dublin in February for another €164,500.
Defending champ Steve O'Dwyer also booked a ticket to Day 2. He won this event last year for €746,543, among his many other high roller successes and brings 259,000 to Day 2.
Some of the players who failed to make it through, busting at least once, included [Removed:17], Jason Wheeler, Nick Petrangelo, and Dario Sammartino. Anyone who wishes to (re)enter can still fire before Day 2 gets underway at 12:30 local time on Monday.