08-26-2021
, 05:52 PM
just thought people might want to hear my views on London poker at the moment. I have visited the main 4 rooms over the last few months, and played mostly weekends cash games and a few tournaments
I would recommend anyone going to a London casino for the first time in over a year, have your ID, as some are re checking ID and job details etc on your first return since the lockdown.
in no particular order...
Empire - plenty of cash games, has been a bit quieter than it used to be, some Fridays and Saturdays it still doesn't fill up. Usually not much of a wait for a seat tho. They offered a £500 a day high hand bonus (yea I shipped one) but now are back to offering their cash race promo which I personally hate. Food is still crap, and sometimes short on waiters/waitresses. Overall still a good room to visit, plenty of value in the cash games, but I wish they offered a more fun/rec friendly promo and not this cash race.
Aspers - played just a couple times, once for a tournament. New card room management staff (those familiar with the GUKPT will recognize them) They offered a decent £250 tournament last weekend with a decent structure with plans for more. (added money in form of £150 for biggest stack from each flight and £225 for highest hand each flight) Food and drinks wise your best bring your own in (you can bring in what you want from outside, just no alcohol and no glass bottles) Cash games looked very decent, lots of money on the tables and plenty of action from what my friends who were playing told me. No free parking currently, its quite close to me but still not a huge fan of this place, the blue lighting does my head in among other things.
The Vic - played a week night tournament (tuesday £200) and also the deepstack plus a few cash games. They have really screwed with the structures and buy ins. All buy ins are up, structures are much worse. the £200 was a very fast turbo, and the deepstack has doubled the buy in, and a reduced structure, day 2 was in the money within 30mins, and they set the final table in less than 2 hours. They are making some changes over the next few months so follow their facebook page for regular updates (the Monday tournament is now a £250+200+50 bounty event but again quite fast structure) Cash games, small sample but not that good action, lots of usual old regs, and quite alot of short stacks.
The Hippodrome - just WOW, this place is just different class imo. They moved from the top 4th floor down to the 3rd floor during the lockdown and its just stunning. Now running bigger capacity of tables, room looks lovely, games are good, plenty of games getting started from lunchtime onwards, good variety too including 2/5, 5/10 and 1/2/5 6 card PLO all running regularly especially at the weekend. Food is great as always. Currently my first choice room for cash games and will be playing their £275 tournament next month too.
hope anyone reading this finds it useful, no rooms using plexiglass (can be requested) and maybe 1 in 10 people wearing masks. Just remember to have ID if its your first time in a while as some are doing updates on their file/record for members
all rooms have twitter pages and are updating quite often with games they have running.
enjoy
I would recommend anyone going to a London casino for the first time in over a year, have your ID, as some are re checking ID and job details etc on your first return since the lockdown.
in no particular order...
Empire - plenty of cash games, has been a bit quieter than it used to be, some Fridays and Saturdays it still doesn't fill up. Usually not much of a wait for a seat tho. They offered a £500 a day high hand bonus (yea I shipped one) but now are back to offering their cash race promo which I personally hate. Food is still crap, and sometimes short on waiters/waitresses. Overall still a good room to visit, plenty of value in the cash games, but I wish they offered a more fun/rec friendly promo and not this cash race.
Aspers - played just a couple times, once for a tournament. New card room management staff (those familiar with the GUKPT will recognize them) They offered a decent £250 tournament last weekend with a decent structure with plans for more. (added money in form of £150 for biggest stack from each flight and £225 for highest hand each flight) Food and drinks wise your best bring your own in (you can bring in what you want from outside, just no alcohol and no glass bottles) Cash games looked very decent, lots of money on the tables and plenty of action from what my friends who were playing told me. No free parking currently, its quite close to me but still not a huge fan of this place, the blue lighting does my head in among other things.
The Vic - played a week night tournament (tuesday £200) and also the deepstack plus a few cash games. They have really screwed with the structures and buy ins. All buy ins are up, structures are much worse. the £200 was a very fast turbo, and the deepstack has doubled the buy in, and a reduced structure, day 2 was in the money within 30mins, and they set the final table in less than 2 hours. They are making some changes over the next few months so follow their facebook page for regular updates (the Monday tournament is now a £250+200+50 bounty event but again quite fast structure) Cash games, small sample but not that good action, lots of usual old regs, and quite alot of short stacks.
The Hippodrome - just WOW, this place is just different class imo. They moved from the top 4th floor down to the 3rd floor during the lockdown and its just stunning. Now running bigger capacity of tables, room looks lovely, games are good, plenty of games getting started from lunchtime onwards, good variety too including 2/5, 5/10 and 1/2/5 6 card PLO all running regularly especially at the weekend. Food is great as always. Currently my first choice room for cash games and will be playing their £275 tournament next month too.
hope anyone reading this finds it useful, no rooms using plexiglass (can be requested) and maybe 1 in 10 people wearing masks. Just remember to have ID if its your first time in a while as some are doing updates on their file/record for members
all rooms have twitter pages and are updating quite often with games they have running.
enjoy
08-28-2021
, 01:24 PM
08-31-2021
, 03:37 PM
09-03-2021
, 01:45 PM
Fingers crossed we are over the worst of it and we are slowly working back to normal, most people are not wearing a mask except for on public transport, and even then its around 30/40% max wearing them, and clearly not all "exempt" people
09-09-2021
, 08:15 PM
09-10-2021
, 01:26 AM
10-28-2021
, 10:42 AM
i guess brexit really worksSent from my AC2003 using Tapatalk
11-06-2021
, 05:05 AM
11-09-2021
, 02:42 AM
11-11-2021
, 07:03 PM
I just headed back to the Vic for the first time since before the pandemic on 10 Nov. 2021. I signed up for £1/2 NLHE, £1/3 NLHE, and £1/2 PLO tables, and just decided to take the one that had the first vacancy - it was the £1/3 NLHE.
I played on a Wednesday night (6:15pm to 10:15pm), which might be part of it, but the wait was about 10-15 minutes, and the rake was 5% capped at £10, which is super-reasonable, IMO. I think the £1/1 game might be 10%, but generally speaking, I'd probably avoid the £1/1 altogether even if you're bankroll-short simply because of the rake.
For about 20 minutes, a few players left and a few others were away from the table, missing blinds, so there was a 3-handed game... but the table quickly filled back up again.
I would consider the game I played to be very beatable - I bought in for £200 and cashed out for £1040 four hours later, but YMMV.
Some things I noticed:
* A lot of players like to buy-in with more than 100BB. The table max is £1000 and I've seen players buy-in with that amount. This doesn't necessarily indicate that they're good, just that they prefer to play very deepstacked. Stay aware of effective stack-sizes.
* Oddly enough, there wasn't anyone I would consider a real "calling station" there, which meant that players can and do find the fold button... perhaps *too* often. I'd say that most of them were just *barely* level 2 players - they thought about what they had, and they thought about what I could have, but they didn't think too much about what I thought they had, or what I thought they thought I had.
* Tight-aggressive is the way to go - emphasis on aggressive. I think at these stakes and venues, there isn't a whole lot of bluffing, and minor semibluffing. I found that by playing good cards agressively (3B AJ+ TT+, for ex), I'd get a lot of folds from squeeze plays in position, and while flop c-bets didn't necessarily gather respect, solid turn c-bets did. Point is, when I had something, I bet for value, when I had nothing, I'd use my position to see if I could take the pot with a bluff - just about the only time I took a passive line is when I had a bluff-catcher with showdown value. So... you know, ABC poker.
* For the most part, the players were weak when it came to bet sizing - both not using the texture of the flop to size their bets, and not really taking into consideration the size of the pot... both for making bets and calling bets.
* Position, Position, Position. Sometimes I'd have absolutely nothing - when bet into, I felt comfortable in late position with floating a flop c-bet (which was usually under-sized, like 1/3rd to 1/2 pot) then when opponent checks the turn, try to steal the pot with a 1/2 to 2/3 pot-sized bluff. It worked way more often than not.
* Don't worry too much about being out-kicked. While at some tables, you want to fold your AT-type hands to a single raise, I found that players didn't really care too much about the possibility of their cards being dominated. A whole lot of A-rag hands get played, and a hell of a lot of people play two-broadway or suited-connectors, or even just random any-twos even when they probably shouldn't (especially out of position.) It wouldn't be unusual to see a UTG raise from someone with A7s when we're 7 or 8 handed.
As for my own lucky night, a few things happened, first, when it came to showdown, I usually had something. There was one hand that I got it all-in on a coinflip and won, but it could have easily gone the other way - if I had lost that hand, I probably would have re-bought in and broken even for the night.
So, that's my little report.
I played on a Wednesday night (6:15pm to 10:15pm), which might be part of it, but the wait was about 10-15 minutes, and the rake was 5% capped at £10, which is super-reasonable, IMO. I think the £1/1 game might be 10%, but generally speaking, I'd probably avoid the £1/1 altogether even if you're bankroll-short simply because of the rake.
For about 20 minutes, a few players left and a few others were away from the table, missing blinds, so there was a 3-handed game... but the table quickly filled back up again.
I would consider the game I played to be very beatable - I bought in for £200 and cashed out for £1040 four hours later, but YMMV.
Some things I noticed:
* A lot of players like to buy-in with more than 100BB. The table max is £1000 and I've seen players buy-in with that amount. This doesn't necessarily indicate that they're good, just that they prefer to play very deepstacked. Stay aware of effective stack-sizes.
* Oddly enough, there wasn't anyone I would consider a real "calling station" there, which meant that players can and do find the fold button... perhaps *too* often. I'd say that most of them were just *barely* level 2 players - they thought about what they had, and they thought about what I could have, but they didn't think too much about what I thought they had, or what I thought they thought I had.
* Tight-aggressive is the way to go - emphasis on aggressive. I think at these stakes and venues, there isn't a whole lot of bluffing, and minor semibluffing. I found that by playing good cards agressively (3B AJ+ TT+, for ex), I'd get a lot of folds from squeeze plays in position, and while flop c-bets didn't necessarily gather respect, solid turn c-bets did. Point is, when I had something, I bet for value, when I had nothing, I'd use my position to see if I could take the pot with a bluff - just about the only time I took a passive line is when I had a bluff-catcher with showdown value. So... you know, ABC poker.
* For the most part, the players were weak when it came to bet sizing - both not using the texture of the flop to size their bets, and not really taking into consideration the size of the pot... both for making bets and calling bets.
* Position, Position, Position. Sometimes I'd have absolutely nothing - when bet into, I felt comfortable in late position with floating a flop c-bet (which was usually under-sized, like 1/3rd to 1/2 pot) then when opponent checks the turn, try to steal the pot with a 1/2 to 2/3 pot-sized bluff. It worked way more often than not.
* Don't worry too much about being out-kicked. While at some tables, you want to fold your AT-type hands to a single raise, I found that players didn't really care too much about the possibility of their cards being dominated. A whole lot of A-rag hands get played, and a hell of a lot of people play two-broadway or suited-connectors, or even just random any-twos even when they probably shouldn't (especially out of position.) It wouldn't be unusual to see a UTG raise from someone with A7s when we're 7 or 8 handed.
As for my own lucky night, a few things happened, first, when it came to showdown, I usually had something. There was one hand that I got it all-in on a coinflip and won, but it could have easily gone the other way - if I had lost that hand, I probably would have re-bought in and broken even for the night.
So, that's my little report.