I'm from Westbourne Park

I'm like 99% going to, was at the empire yesterday and a lot of the ****** fish are playing 1b, so yeah most likely

I live in Olympia, so just 5 minutes up the road from you. Love the area for the ease and relative speed of getting to pretty much any London card room on the bus, as I hate tubes and all the buses I need are frequent night buses. Also if you're feeling flush, a cab back from the Vic is a lot less than £20 and it will be around £20 or so from the central London rooms. It's £35 from Aspers, which is annoying and something I try to not do unless it's a large multi day comp.

I'm going to pop into empire while I'm at work today to grab a leaflet, but 90% I'm playing too . See you there!

So I can only play on day 1a due to having to do things on saturday, gonna be tight with it finishing at 11:30pm and having to get the last train to southend.

If anyone has a couch or something i can crash on for the night let me know as i don't really wanna get a super expensive hotel, if not gl me.

t0pb1ll1n see you on day 2

You're from Southend?

Yes I am - will be at gentings tonight.

Yup, I was living in Chelsea until a moth or two ago, now down the road in Parsons Green. Where in SK are you?

Wish I could help mate but ill be in south London tonight not at home. I'm actually working just 5 mins from the empire today so I'm going to pop down see how many runners etc it gets today. Good luck might see you there!

Nice man I'm expecting about 100 for day 1a they said that 50 pre registered for today, Saturday will definitely have more people though.

Got 62 players so yeah

Southend/Westcliff cash games any good? I have ever played live cash and have no poker friends, so have never had the opportunity (unless I were to go alone, which isn't very appealing).

They're ok during 30min tournament break/after 9pm but other than that they're ****ty nit regs

Made day 2 after being on the most entertaining table ever, go me.

Also there's a £30 freezeout that gets like 80 players so if you wanna come let me know

I heard that the 55 freezeout at aspers on fridays gets like hundreds of people? Is this true?

The times i've been there there have been ~200 iirc

It had 245 runners last night with about 25 rebuys.

Cheers, I'll keep it in mind. I don't really play tournaments, pretty much exclusively a cash player but I've been down a couple of times and played a few tourneys with mates that wanted to play on their birthdays etc. iirc I have a 100% record of busting by being dealt QQ and shipping it into bigger pairs.

I really fancy playing live cash but it doesn't sound like v. good value.

Are the regs for the most part decent, smart players or jaded, bitter fish-berating glass tappers? In other words, is it worth coming to play for the first time just for the experience / meeting poker players / social aspect if there are no fishies? Or will the regs make me want to go home and play online?

Imo the regs are exceptionally worse than online regs and the cash game goes on to 6am+ so there's definitely value in playing, come down 9pmish and get a seat before break.

Here's a breakdown in addition to the ^ of the cash games there imo. Just giving my honest opinion. I'm not a reg but I've been like least 20 times over the last year and have a good feel for the room. The regs are fine, bit clique, but who isnt these days. For instance:-

• The yout regs there are pretty lol when you get a few of them on a table and its easy to integrate/have a crack with them without getting too chummy. But their very clique.
• The middleaged nitregs arent soo bad either, compared to some of the london pos you can come across. But again their very clique.
• The oldmancoffees regs get abused left right and centre by both sets of the above. And these are the guys that could potentially confuse you to begin with and then berate you as a first time vistor... with you being under the impression they are solid regs... subsequently putting you off future live poker.

Imo theres not enough fish+oldmancoffee value to play in the cash games as theres only ever 2 tables running, always with 2/3 of each of the above cliques. If I were you I'd start out somewhere like Aspers and then venture out to Westcliffe once your used to holding your own at a table.

I mean, are they generally OK guys, or arseholes?

oh, this was answered while i was typing this

Also, Westcliff is v. local for me, I could walk there!

there are lots of nitty players at westcliff, but there is still plenty of value

i played there saturday, granted its not the best 1/2 game but was deff value, watching a guy 4bet the flop to £400 on a 10 10 5 board, thinking his QQ is going to be good...of course the other guy has Q10, and bingo Q on the turn for a sick bad beat for Alex.

but as you say, not enough value to warrant it a regular stop on my schedule for cash games. theres always a mad rush at the first break for a 30min punt, and then a few tables fill up by the second break as people bust, it peaked at 2 x 1/1 and 1 x 1/2 game, they used to get 130+ runners on the saturday £30 donkament, and keep it top 9/10 paid so prize money is decent, but its been a bit quiet the last few weeks (football and other events clashed) (PS Dan if your reading this a much better review than my last wouldn't you think?)

Aspers Friday is still getting 250+ players (inc re entrys) BUT they adjusted the structure, so its not a turbo, and starts at 7pm and finishes after 7am in the morning! so you really do need to be prepared for this tournament, i couldn't play this if i had been working that day, as 12 hours is a long time to grind to make an FT.

But it is the best 1 day structure/value comp about imo in terms of runners/prize/clock/chips etc but i liked the turbo as it suited my style and had plenty of practice online on where to be shoving etc, instead of folding down to 3bb like most of them used to do!

As for london poker, i stopped in the empire yesterday (friday) morning and found 1 decent table with a couple fish loaded up with chunks of chips! got stuck 300 pretty quick and found AA 5 way to the flop after i 3 bet to £65, i jam £120 on a 995 flop and get called by QQ and hold, managed to donk off 200 with 1010 vs JJ on a 9 high flop after not finding a fold against an ABC player. But it was a good game, and when i left at approx 2ish there was 3 tables running, and the room was busy mainly because of the tournament (which i heard day 1 got 87 players TBC)

London Poker seems busier than ever at low stakes, but seems spread around lots of rooms, seems like pot luck if you find a decent game, heard the empire has been a bit quiet the last few weeks, there facebook said 5 holdem games and 1 PLO at 9pm on a friday night...that's really poor imo, i remember getting there at 8pm and the room was full with 20 people on the waiting list!

any idea how many runners the UKIPT plo has gotten so far?

Well let me know if you go alphabetsoup - it's also super local for me 15min walk down the beach

Out the 25k grntd

Dropped to 10k and then KK<JJ aipf at blinds 150/300 (couple of hrs ago)

Best of luck to u Tehdestroyer hopefully ull ship it!!

Unlucky dude, how many runners were there today?