Grinding Private Games and Casinos in London
If you’re reading this, you’re probably wondering about what grinding Live Poker is like in the UK, especially the private game scene and I’m here to talk about how fun it is, some crazy **** I see and in general my thoughts on poker and living as a live grinder.
My background is I have been an online cash/mtt reg for 4 years, swapping between both a lot of have played as big as 2knl on apps and as low as 10abi on stars, dependent on how in the gutter we are at the time. I used to work various office jobs before but made the swap to online poker in 2017 and haven’t looked back since then. I have had brief live experience before a few years ago but obviously corona put a stop to all of that and I wanted to try out live games after casino’s opened again just to see how they were, which is what led me to building up a network of private games as well and taking the grind super seriously.
Realistically I don’t have the drive to want to be an online reg anymore, it has led to some dark times and studying and getting to HSNL online wasn’t really something that appealed to me as I got older, lost a bit of that competitive drive for sure. I am playing primarily 200nl live at the moment however games play pretty big, usually there is a 5 straddle on and people are sat around 5-600 deep so its effectively 2-5, I think technically I’m good enough to get to 10/20 without big work on my game, especially playing private games and also 6 card PLO is a craziness in the UK at the moment with some of the biggest softest games I have ever seen so its something I would want to learn as well.
I will try to post an update after my long sessions with some interesting hands, and some of the characters you meet playing live poker, as well as my understandings of the economics of private games and how these people stay in action. I obviously don’t want to dox myself or say anything out of line about my peers so I will be changing names and locations, but these are all true things I have witnessed playing live, think kind of Truestoryteller but with a chav twist.
3 Replies
Must've gone busto. In my experience all private games in London and in other places all over the world are full of cheats and collusion, unless you manage to find a way to run pure even with the cheating you'll eventually get fked. The amount of cheating devices around make this such a dumb thing to do, unless you're running the game or are very close with the people organising it. I have got up and left (even if I've won) when it didnt feel right.
Must've gone busto. In my experience all private games in London and in other places all over the world are full of cheats and collusion, unless you manage to find a way to run pure even with the cheating you'll eventually get fked. The amount of cheating devices around make this such a dumb thing to do, unless you're running the game or are very close with the people organising it. I have got up and left (even if I've won) when it didnt feel right.
Had a chat to a guy at a table recently (in a regulated casino!) who lived out in the Gulf. He said that there are a lot of private games that run in Dubai, but thought around half of them were cheated.
