Quick, what do the poker rooms at Maryland Live! near Baltimore and Genting at Westfield Stratford City (London) have in common? No, not 'cards,' 'chips,' 'bad beats,' or any other silly answer. I'll let you ponder that and come back to it in a minute.
In July of this year, the Genting casino conglomerate reopened the (formerly Aspers) casino on the top floor of the Westfield mega-mall at Stratford City in East London. A short hop from bustling Westminster, I'd played there once before and wanted to give it another try. It was a quick trip from King's Cross and then a somewhat meandering walk from the train station into the mall, and then finally up the secret escalator to the food floor ('court' is insufficient) and then the casino itself.
Bring ID, but not a hat
If you're not used to British casinos/poker room protocol, it takes some getting used to. I was about to say that "unlike the freewheeling American casino industry..." but then I recalled that at the Bristol (er, Virginia, not England) Hard Rock, they're using facial identification and checking ID. In Las Vegas (so far) you can rock up, provide ID only if you look under 30-ish, give 'em money, and sit down to play poker.
Throughout the UK, you need a membership card, and you only get a membership card by showing solid ID. Just as an experiment, I gave them my California driver's license. They were okay with it, I think, but I had my passport ready to deploy if necessary. It's probably easiest if you just give them the passport off the top – my receptionist was quite helpful, but parsing the driver's license was extra work for her.
Which reminds me, before I could even get to the membership desk, the security guards at the bottom of the stairs very graciously explained that I was going to have to remove my baseball cap before I stepped into the casino proper. Had this been a UK regulatory requirement, that would have made some amount of sense – the British government exerts a great deal more control over casinos than much of what you see in the States. But other casinos around London permitted hats, and one of my favorite new poker buddies, Aaron, whom I met at the Grosvenor Victoria, was wearing a spectacular fur-eared hat. He wouldn't have gotten within 100 meters of the £1/£2 game at Stratford City.
The actual poker
Getting the membership card sorted away was actually more of a pain than it should have been, but a gracious floorman in the poker room trekked back across the casino with me (it wasn't showing in their database) to get me to a point where I could actually buy chips and play poker.
During the day, the only games available were £1/£2 no-limit hold'em, though a £2/£5 game kicked off later. They also deal PLO but (wait for this) almost all PLO in London (maybe all of it – I don't know) is 6-card. So unlike silly hold'em, where you have one two-card combination, or plain ol' vanilla PLO, where you have six two-card combos, six-card PLO offers you fifteen different ways to get there. The hold'em players said of the game, "Why don't they just go over to the roulette table?" Exactly.
Sidebar: Two decades ago, I was chatting with a small group of players at some London event. In the group was the exquisite Victoria Coren-Mitchell (still 'Vicky Coren' at that time). The topic of PLO came up, and having just been exposed to the insane variant, I said, "Vicky, have you ever played six-card PLO?" She raised one perfect eyebrow. "Is there another way to play it?"
I found the games similar to $2 games in the States. However, there was noticeably more passivity, and the value bets were much smaller. If you're not calibrated to UK games, you could get yourself in trouble thinking that a £20 bet into a £100 pot on the river represented weakness.
The players were all gracious and pleasant, asked how American poker is, and said how they couldn't wait to get to Vegas.
"For poker? Goodness, go to California, Texas... anywhere but Vegas."
There are plenty of poker rooms in central London, and I wouldn't make a special trip out to Stratford City unless somebody drags you there for the shopping. But hey, it's a perfectly fine room, and there are some benefits to sitting smack on top of a massive shopping mall.
Which brings us to the answer to the question of the commonality between the Genting Stratford City room and Maryland Live! in Baltimore: they both have a Nando's restaurant within a three-minute walk. That's probably sufficient reason to visit either room, right there.
Genting Stratford City by the numbers
- Getting there: the fastest way is to grab a Southeastern train (seven whole minutes) from St. Pancras. It's literally a longer walk from the railway station at Stratford City than the train ride itself.
- Shufflers: DeckMate 2. I didn't check the USB ports.
- Charging: Speaking of USB, no USB chargers. But there's a commercial charging kiosk.
- Cards: Fournier poker size, large index. If you're not conversant in card sizes, almost every poker room in the U.S. uses 'bridge' size (not 'poker' size) cards. Don't ask, because I don't know. Poker size cards are wider, and definitely take some getting used to.
- Games are dealt 8-handed.
- Buy-ins: £1/2: £100-£500; £2/5: £200-£1000
- Rake: 5% to £10, plus £2 for promotions. This is standard for London, and wow, that's a lot of money. There were a few guys there that were talking like they were playing professionally. The idea of trying to survive in London on £500-cap games with rake like that... man, that doesn't sound like much of an existence.
Parting shot
There were posters all over the casino advertising an upcoming roulette tournament. This is not the sort of thing I could make up. Perhaps if some of those roulette tournament trail grinders wander into the poker room, it explains how the poker pros can make their nut in £1/2 games.
