Playing Live in London
The last few years' unprecedented boom in the poker industry has brought players in London choices for where they might hone their live tournament and cash games, but not as many as a city of this size might be expected to provide. Foreign visitors often ask me where to play in London, and need to be reminded that it's a very big place, and what is local to one
person represents an hour-and-a-half drive for another. Card clubs on the scale of California's Commerce Casino or The Bicycle Casino are not really viable in a town where space sells at a premium and the legality of those already existing is continually questioned. The groundbreaking victory in court of the Dusk Till Dawn club (see "The Inside Straight"), opening soon in Nottingham, is unlikely to make it much easier for similar-scale poker-only businesses to open in the capital, so where, and why, do people go to play face to face in London, other than casino cardrooms, and can they do it legally?
The first place to start for a beginner might well be one of the multitude of home games or pub games that are set up all over the place and often very efficiently organised. Groups like London Poker Meetup alert members of their websites to when and where poker is being played in their area, and there is a regular selection of competitions. Pub leagues are popular, and ever expanding, although each one seems to have different rules and some don't allow play for actual money, with a leader board set up instead with prizes or online cash allotted to the top spots over weeks or months.
As far as businesses go, if you type "poker club London" into Google, the first page brings up some of the more well-known non-casino names - a selection of Riley's pool, snooker and poker clubs, the Gutshot in Clerkenwell, the Western Club, and the Loose Cannon. These represent three different sorts of venue, each operating under different rules. Pubs and snooker halls that provide rooms for poker games are counted as "non-dedicated venues," and as such are exempted from licensing, the obtaining of which (or not) is what embroiled the Gutshot Club in the courts for the last year. The Gutshot, Western, and Loose Cannon are all private clubs, and the latter claims to have totally bypassed any legal issues with its operation by taking no rake from cash games or tournaments, the money being provided from members via an annual membership fee. In theory, this is great news for a winning cash player; in practise, it has yet to attract regular large numbers, although the atmospheric vaulted chamber next to Cannon Street Station is an impressive venue.
A business providing space for skill games (or games of mixed skill and chance) has to make money to stay open, and it is via a voluntary contribution of a percentage of a prize pool or cash pots that several clubs raise funds while skirting the gaming license issue. One such venue is the Big Slick Club in Croydon. While this area is at the very edge of my London A-Z, it still counts as a capital club, and attracts between 50 and 120 runners for its regular tournaments. As hard to find as I reckon is possible, and reached via an entrance reminiscent of that to the den in
Rounders, the inside suddenly reveals a surprisingly comfortable, bright, fully dealer-dealt, and professionally run venue. It caters to many games - there is a chess league, backgammon, darts, and kalooki, as well as poker - and has a small but very regular and enthusiastic clientele. Club secretary Ashleigh Ace (not a pseudonym, as far as I am aware) was open about the club's regulations: It is members-only, with a 48-hour waiting period and a membership fee of £25 (which is actually, in a nice marketing tweak, deposited straight into an account set up for you on its online site). A signature is required from members wishing to support the club by donating the previously mentioned percentage of prize pools; in effect, if the members all declined to donate, the club would close.
All of this, combined with the costs of dealers and maintenance, seems like a lot of work, for what may in the long run still be a shaky sort of business venture in the eyes of the Gaming Commission. With such emphasis being placed by several clubs (like Big Slick and the Gutshot) on their online poker sites, the question is raised as to why the live card club is so popular. You play far fewer hands per hour (fewer still if you end up self-dealing), opt in to be charged, have to travel at least half an hour on average from your house, and can't run Poker Tracker.
The answer, according to Ashleigh Ace, is that a card club is a kind of competitive community centre, where its members, for example, meet up to play against each other and in interleague matches of all kinds of games, and don't have to worry about dress codes. Quite apart from one player I overheard rehashing the eternal suspicions concerning online sites' trustworthiness, the consensus there seemed to be, "It's so nice to have personal contact; we've become a community, made real friends. We'll try to find a way to stay open; it's too much like family here now." She added, "Plus, we're often the only ones awake at this time of night." Add to this the secret-society feel of the small clubs tucked away around the city, and it's easier to see the draw, as it were, of face-to-face play through the night when screen glare wears Londoners down.
Jen Mason is a part of www.blondepoker.com. She is responsible for its live tournament coverage in the UK and abroad.
