L2L, no tipping questions outside the containment thread. I should've specified that when I directed you here.

Yes, they get an hourly wage. Fairly sure it's illegal in the UK to pay people only in tips.

About 15-20 small food outlets outside the casino (it's in a big shopping centre)

Dusk Till Dawn - UK's biggest poker room offers it free for new dealers. Know that some Grosvenors give you like 2 hours training and then let you start.

what about some real nice places, don't have to be right at the casino.

Not going to find anything outside the shopping centre. Here is a list. Some decent places, but nothing fancy: https://www.zomato.com/london/restau...ntre-stratford

What's the best way to exchange EUR in GBP? I will be in London for the UKIPT and need to change around 2k€.

Try currencyfair or transferwise online

Sent from my LG-D855 using 2+2 Forums

Don't know about the above two but thomasexchange has by far the best rates in London - prebook the currency online and pick up (can pay in cash or card when u get there) for the best rates btw.

Forgot to mention that i'm living in london

Interesting couple of promotions from Hippodrome and Empire as they battle over £2/£5 NL.

Hippodrome offer free rake for 15 minutes out of every hour. Empire offer free food up to £25 from the Carlsberg Menu (which is actually good, unlike the standard poker room menu), and free parking. Lately both rooms have had a game every night, sometimes two.

Damn that's good. Battle over the 1/2 games and hook it up!

If you guys are looking for bonuses in the games, visit the Cash Game Festival at Aspers this week. Lowered rake caps for higher games, everyone gets the highest vip bonus for food and drinks, multiple price draws, high hand bonuses and so on.

Jumped into a relatively reg-free 2/5 game last week at The Hippo and found it to be pretty good. Fairly shallow stacks all-round with plenty of unknowns. Guy plays A7 on a A89 board (two diamonds) as if it were the nuts. (Get it all-in on the flop with A9 and get paid off.) Definitely softer than 2/5 at The Vic.

Can't see a Cash Game Festival being a good thing for low-stakes regs tbh. Won't this just bring in the decent high rollers from the UK and Europe? I'll still do the odd 1/1 sesh there though as they've extended their free-parking promo through until end of April. That's a £6.50 per night saving which aint too shabby if you add it up.

The Aspers Cash festival seems like it will be bad

Lowered rake cap?

That’s not true – all games 1/2 and above are always the same [capped at £10 plus £1 for promotions]

As it shows here

http://www.aspersstratford.co.uk/pok...e-players.html

And here is the cash festival rake cap:

Cash Game NLH
Stake Buy-in Rake Cap
£1-£1 £25-£150 10% £5
£1-£2 £50-£500 5% £10
£1-£3 £150-£1,500 5% £10
£2-£5 £250-£2,500 5% £10
£5-£10 £500-No Cap 5% £10
£10-£25 £1,000-No Cap 5% £10
£25-£50 £2,500-No Cap 5% £10

Err, the same

So the lower cap is BS

I remember when Aspers first started running 2/5 and we could choose a table charge or rake… I always did and pushed others to choose table charge – but players didn’t realise it was a better deal… and now Aspers don’t offer the choice

So the cash race rake is nothing special

The promotions [?]

The card room have admitted that the cash tournament will NOT be any bigger than normal… BUT they are still taking the extra £1 out of every pot. I asked them a week ago, and yesterday. They confirmed this.

So what does this mean [from the Aspers website]: “All games will be raked as normal with no added cash game surcharge.”

As normal. But then they say elsewhere lower rake cap????

And there is no mention of the extra £1 coming off [for promotions] – I wonder if people who have seen the advertising [that doesn’t mention the extra pounds] and have travelled over will be annoyed [?] at the £1 a hand surcharge

So if these extra £s aren’t going to inflate the cash race tournament – where will they go [?]

Apparently the normal high hand bonus won’t exist – instead there will be a high hand awarded every few hours – who ever has had the best hand in that time gets some cash.

I suppose also the extra £s will have loads of admin fee taken out [for the house - otherwise they wouldn't insist on taking it], and also used to offer a few extras or to cover their own expenses. Like if they make a mistake and offer someone a meal to say sorry for a dealer msitake... it cancom e out of the players promotion fund.

Poker players are a bit sappy – that we pay for our ‘free’ promotions.

Also I doubt the games will be good. As if people are traveling to play cash games [from overseas] they are going to be playing bigger and better than Aspers normal players do [on average].

It would probably be different if they were coming over for a tournament – as then once knocked out they may well play crazy on a Cash game [as they came and primarily play, tournaments] – but for this we have cash game players coming over.

Great for the house as they make more from cash tables.

I guess if you want to play a live game [and be featured on] the internet – it may be of interest to people. But I wouldn’t want to do that.

On a happier note…

The Empire 2/5 promotion seems good… I didn’t realise you got the food and the free parking…. And 25% of the time rake free… now that seems a good promotion. And is such a good deal that playing it would feel more like a cash game festival

Hi Guys
I started a thread in live casino poker but only got one response (thank you like2limp)
So I thought maybe I would get a better response from the London regs

As I mentioned before I have won a seat at UKIPT London main event, after listening to advice here I have opted for day 1C as I feel there will be more chips to be won and as a lot of the online qualifiers have opted for 1C there is a chance of finding a softer starting table. ( believe me I know that a lot of really good players qualify online but judging by the satalites I played an awful lot of bad players do too )

I have been playing poker for 20 years and have a good understanding of the game, I used to play in the biggest tournaments before the poker boom and used to do quite well but due to personal/financial reasons I took a few years out. I always stayed interested and kept up to date with game theory etc. I started playing again a couple of years ago but due to work and financial commitments I don't play very often and only £50 tournaments but I have been doing quite well (last 12 tourneys = 1 win + 4 final tables + 3 min cashes )
Obviously the UKIPT is going to be a whole different level so I was looking for any advice or if anybody who has played it in recent years could offer me their insight into what I should expect. I have never played a tourney with a 250 bb starting stack and 1hr blinds, although I am excited to be playing I am also slightly worried about ****ing it all up with a stupid and avoidable mistake as this buy in is well above my bankroll level and I don't know when I will get another chance to play at this level

Thanks for your time and your thoughts

The Cash Game Festival has started! Atm 12 poker tables running at Aspers. The stream goes live in 15minutes with 1£/3£ Texas with a great line up. Check it out on twitch www.twitch.tv/cashgamefestival.

didn't realise you were a shill

makes the 'lower rake cap' statement worse

i think you have to PM the moderators before posting - if it's your room/event

I'm actually playing there and the rake part was my error, as the festival in other places has a rake cap of 10 which is lower then the usual in those places.

What games ran last night?

JP, just play your normal game but don't do anything crazy in the first few levels. A lot of players are unlikely to be getting a serious amount of chips in without a nutty hand early. I find a lot of the bad play from players comes at the shallower depths where they have enough idea what to shove or call shoves with but it shouldn't take very long to be able to generalise how your opponents treat the game. It may start deep but won't stay deep for that long any way. Just treat it like any other tournament and don't be scared.

The games were rather poor

This is Aspers Cash Festival

But poor games aren’t something a club can do anything about… some days they are good, some they are bad. I looked at most the games – looking for a good one – and they didn’t seem great

There was a 10/25 that was all the usual [Vic/Palm] suspects – this was streamed

Just out of interest how do the streams work – can you watch them after the event [in full]?

As the actual stream was good to watch – I only saw about half an hours worth – the commentators did a very poor job of commentating on the game – in fact they hardly ever commentated on any hands. But their general poker chit chat was ok. As long as you are happy to follow the action yourself. Though it was a little off for them to make it clear they never play at these stakes. I think they probably didn’t have the confidence to commentate on bigger games than they play – so were happy to deflect the conversation elsewhere. But despite that – it was watchable. If it’s possible to watch these after the fact [and be able to pause/etc] I would be interested to do so… anyone know how these things work?

So that 10/25

There was also a 6 card Omaha

Then [as well as the 10/25] they had NLH 5/10, 1/3, three to four 1/2s, and the usual five or so 1/1’s

But these games were mostly just the usual suspects – and a few others from Vic/empire/etc

There was no Scandinavian invasion [that I noticed]

In fact I think I recognised most the players [but then it was a school night]

The games died pretty quickly, and a while after 2am it was down to three tables, then before 4am it was 2 tables and they were never full.

In fact from then onwards you wouldn’t have noticed it was anything but a normal day in Aspers Poker room. Two games a 1/2 and a 1/1 and both with seats open

My guess is the ‘festival’ won’t really start until Friday night [?]

It will be a bit busier until then – but on Friday you might get the overseas people coming for the weekend.

Though I still doubt it will make for any good games – as the overseas players would probably be stronger than average – to be interested in travelling to play – especially at anything above 1/2 … and who travels [overseas] to play a 1/1 anyway

The promotion is a mess. Highest hand every three hours gets £200

But … there’s no way to know what is the current highest hand [unless you go over and ask at the cash desk] – so if the other guy folds – do you turn over your quad 9’s [just in case]???? Should just have the highest hand up on a board somewhere you can look over at whenever you feel like it.

So the live feed was good, games after a certain time were dead or dying, but I think it’s far too early to judge.

Gunna pop over this afternoon to see what's what.

Depends on the streamer, they can choose to archive their streams or not

Aspers did archive the stream however, VOD can be found here

https://www.twitch.tv/cashgamefestival/profile

Think they're streaming today at 7pm too
Not sure if I'm allowed to post the link here but feel free to edit it out of my post if you think it need be

Thank you pvas