poker clubs in London - gutsht-western -bigslick -equal chance

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London Poker Club Reviews
Gutshot Club Sat in deep city London this club was set up in around 2001. Up until last year this was the ONLY poker club, outside of the usual casinos, where one could just turn up and play. You still have to be a member though so do remember to let the staff know you’re a ‘newbie’ to the club upon your arrival so that forms can be filled and membership acquired. Whilst not the best place in the world for parking (outside after 7pm is ok providing you avoid the double yellow lines and stick to the single ones) there are two local tube stations no more than 5 mins away which, given the traffic in London these days is probably the best way to go. The club itself has recently gone under expansion and redevelopment. Tournaments are now held ‘next door’ to the main club area where space for some 15 tables has been acquired. Cash games are now held exclusively ‘downstairs’ in the main club building. These run 24 hours a day with limits from £25 PL Hold’Em (sit down with a min £25) up to £250 games which run on occasions where there are a sufficient number of players available to sustain such a game. Lets make one thing clear though! This place is not POSH! Young players (18 –25) dominate the place and as such the bankrolls and games are generally smaller than the more upmarket places that have recently opened. Having said that though the games, food & beer are good and there’s always the bank of Internet terminals to keep you amused should you find yourself waiting for a game. These cost £2 an hour and work on ‘time-codes’, which can be purchased directly from the bar. The tournaments run 7 days a week with both afternoon and evening events costing from £10 up to £50 with bigger buy-ins on a weekend. Gutshot also run a couple of festivals a year which tend to be well attended with tournament buy-ins from £100 up to £500 for the main event! A great place to visit if you’re a beginner or intermediate player as this is the target market of the club itself and there’s nothing wrong with that! www.gutshot.com The Gutshot Bar and Restaurant 44-48 Clerkenwell Road London, EC1M 5PS Telephone: +44 (0)20 7253 9980 Fax: +44 (0)20 7336 8348 Loose Cannons Here’s an idea. Lets create a poker club in the City of London where players can come straight after work and play a nice tournament in a great venue with a great bar area, great restaurant facilities and play RAKE FREE! Sounds great but here’s the crunch…you have to charge people £91 a quarter membership fee, up front, for partaking. Loose Cannons have taken the view that they won’t fall foul of any current UK gaming laws which basically makes all the clubs I’ve reviewed up to now technically illegal. A case brought against the Gutshot Club, by the CPS, is scheduled for the courts on Jan 6th 2007. That case will, once and for all, deem whether clubs like the Gutshot, Big Slick, Equalchance, River Card Club, Full House, Western and no doubt many others up and down the land can run under the model they all currently use to finance their operations and that is to RAKE the pot! In order for Loose Cannons to go against this financial model they’ve decided to create a PRIVATE MEMBERS CLUB scenario where effectively you pay a membership fee up front and then no other charges whatsoever. No rake, no additional entry fee for tournaments, no nothing. The club opened its doors on Oct 23rd 2006 and there’s no doubt that the venue is magnificent. A spacious venue with room for 450 (so I’m informed) this place is undoubtedly the best equipped, most luxurious club out there. There’s a vast bar & restaurant area. No Internet terminals clutter the room. No slot machines. No sir…there’s just poker and that may be its problem! The club operates only 3 nights a week at present but will expand to 6 come January when the full membership scheme kicks in. The other 4 nights the building is used for other purposes. There’s a current ‘trail membership’ in operation, which costs £25 and will give you access to the club, and all its facilities until Jan 23rd 2007. Its an ideal venue for the more ‘upmarket’ player that mad the Gutshot a little to studenty in its approach and for the more discerning amongst you although don’t be put off by that statement. The club is run through the very experienced hands of Roy Houghton and friends and it’s a pleasure to play there. Even if the ceiling is 50 feet above you and constant rumblings of a train above that may kill your thought process whilst deciding whether to raise or fold. www.loosecannonpoker.com Plus points: Classy, spacious Minus points: The upfront membership fee The Western Club “Go West young man”, as sung by the Village People and the Pet Shop Boys. Well if you’re a poker player in London you’ll no doubt come across this little club set back of the A40 and approx a 5 min walk from Park Royal tube station. One of the ‘newer’ clubs on the block the Western is still trying to establish itself as THE place to play and given that you’re much more likely to drive here, than say the Gushot where public transport rules, then you’re much more likely to meet the more mature poker player that no longer seeks the spit and sawdust establishments and seeks a more refined place to pay. The club itself is members only and new faces must sign up (bring picture ID) before jogging up the stairs to the first floor of this old office block where you’ll find the majority of the action taking place. To the right, as you reach the top of the stairs, is the bar area. Big screen TV, plush seats and a bar stocking all you could wish for. In front of you lay a bank of Internet connected PC’s where on-line poker can be played all day long. The club has affiliated itself to ‘Full Tilt Poker’ so be prepared to open an account with them as it’s the only on-line game available. There are around 20 terminals in all. Ten of which are in a ‘smoking’ area whilst 10 reside in the ‘non-smoking area’. This is where you’ll also find the card room itself. With room for about 20 tables you’ll find that the busy nights are Tuesdays & Fridays. The £100 NL tournament of a Tuesday night, will usually attract between 50 & 60 runners whilst the Friday night game will attract upwards of 80+. With it being a fairly new club the decoration etc is fairly pristine and whilst other clubs still allow smoking in the main area the Western does not thereby creating a clean and pleasant atmosphere for playing in. Cash games usually kick off after players are knocked out of the tournament but you won’t find that many of them. Limits are usually a £50 or a £100 sit down PL games both in Hold’Em or Omaha. www.thewesternclub.com Email: Geoff@TheWesternClub.com Phone: 0208 896 0033 or 0208 896 0077 Fax 0208 993 7171 The Western Club 620 Western Avenue Acton London W3 0T Equal Chance Club Nestled in deepest Walthamstow, E17, lies the EqualChance Poker Club. Whilst this place may not be as ‘clean’ (in terms of space) as the Western it certainly knows how to pack’em in and that, to its detriment, is its problem. There’s undoubtedly a big demand in the East End of London but the floor space allocated for the poker seems too busy at times especially when running the famous £10k guarantee tournaments which take place every month or so. This particular tournament attracts over 100 players and that’s just too many for size of the club as you’re constantly attempting to squash past someone on the way to your seat, the bar or the toilet. Membership is again compulsory and you’re invited to complete an application form upon your first visit. Two forms of ID are required. One must be a picture ID (passport, driving licence) whilst the 2nd must show your name and address on a utility bill. Its free to join. The club has all the usual facilities! A well stocked bar is supplemented by good food. Banks of Internet terminals line the walls where all of your favourite on-line card rooms can be found. The terminals operate on the proven ‘time code’ basis whereby every hour you play will set you back £2. An additional content of this club that is absent in the numbers found in other clubs reviewed are a number of ‘cash game’ machines. Similar to true slot machines these machines work on the basis that they are for ‘amusement only’. Tickets are printed which represent your winnings and you take them to the cash desk to cash out! Cash games range from the £50 sit down PL Hold’Em up to the £100 Dealers choice game. All cash games are dealer dealt and professionally handled as are the tournaments, I believe. As with any of these independent poker clubs though the main draw are the tournaments. They run 7 days a week varying from a £5 rebuy night up to a £75 FREEZEOUT on a Friday. Numbers, of course, vary but provided the numbers don’t exceed 80 or so then it’s a great night out. More than that though and you’re starting to feel a little squished! As with all card clubs outside the centre of London the place is packed with locals but the value of the £10k guarantee (£30 rebuy) gives excellent value. www.equalchance.co.uk Plus points: Great turnout for the £10k tournaments, dealer dealt Minus points: Can seem cramped when busy The River Card Club The River Card Club in Stanmore, Middx, represents North London, in card room establishments. Not far from Stanmore tube station and on a busy main road this small venue will suit players that are either beginners or intermediate players as the tournaments there reflect that in their pricing structure. Most nights of the week they run a £10 No Limit (Rebuy) event. Obviously this game is prevalent in the minds of the young and it’s this audience the club is aimed at. Membership is compulsory but a quick show of some picture ID gets you in and enrolled with the minimum of fuss. The club itself is a single floor comprising of approx a dozen card tables, a small café area where free soft drinks, tea and coffee can be found along with the usual sandwiches & snacks (chargeable) and the usual bank of Internet terminals for those that can’t wait to play or just want to catch up on the latest news. £2 an hour will see you all right although there are only about 6 terminals, which means that, on a busy night, you’ll have to be quick to nab a seat at one. Tournaments are self-dealt, apart from the final table, so there’s plenty of practice to be had at shuffling, dealing, button passing etc. No harm in that! The club itself is smoke free which means there’s usually a queue to get onto the balcony as the club is situated above the offices of a well known building society which no doubt means that the summer months must be nice there. The busiest night there is claimed to be Monday when over 60 bodies play there. Expect a prize pool of around £2500 for this particular evening. There’s good access to parking in the evening although beware of clampers and traffic wardens in the period 8am thru 6.30pm especially on a Saturday. www.therivercardclub.com Plus points: Spacious, Clean, Nice people Minus points: Needs a few more bodies throwing its way Big Slick Club South London’s poker scene can be found at the BIG Slick club in deepest Croydon. “When we first showed units 9A, 10 and 11, Royal Oak Centre, Purley”, says Tony Hakki one of the owners, “to our friends and told them that we intended to make them our home and start the best poker players club in the South of England, we warned them that they’d need a good imagination. The place was just a dark shell of a building. To call it dilapidated would be to praise it too highly. A few months later, the building was transformed into the Big Slick Private Members Club. The owners agreed to making some space for us and we had no hesitation in moving-in, setting-up the tables and stacking the chip”. The club itself, in terms of spaciousness & facilities are pretty much on a par with the Western in that there’s a well socked bar area, TV lounge and plenty of Internet terminals to play on whilst waiting your turn in the cash games. Big Slick is a members-only club; it's free to join, but there is a 24hr waiting time between applying for membership and becoming a full member which best means you log onto their website, address below, and join via that making sure there’s 24 hours between then and you wanting to play. Tournaments run nightly and are priced from the usual manic £10 NL rebuy ones of a Mon, Thurs or Friday night (Friday is classed as a beginners night) to the Sunday tournament which is currently a £50+one optional rebuy. The club can seat 120 players and that’s probably a bit of a crush but usually there’s plenty of room to play and not feel the breathe of the person behind you! Cash games usually start once player start falling out of the tournaments so if you’re into cash games only then pop along circa 9.30pm and you won’t have that long to wait for your chance to spend your dough. All cash games are dealer dealt. If you live in South London then this is one place I’d definitely recommend as the owners, poker players themselves, have put of lot of time and money into making this venue one of the nicest there is! www.bigslick.co.uk Plus Points: Nice atmosphere, Friendly crowd, Good tournaments Minus points: A bit out of the way in a crumbly concrete building Review By Mark Strahan

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