The current popularity of poker - online and televised - means a lot of people want to live out a little fantasy of being a high roller (and seeing if they can do it) but without going through the pain of losing hundreds of quid!
This was the second Rangers Poker Night - the first one was a £250 buy-in (i.e. you had to put up £250 worth of chips to sit at the table) - that was felt to be a bit much for most punters trying the game out and it attracted really serious players and not the social players prepared to pay smaller amounts for their fun.
So, on Saturday the limit was set at £50 (excuse me if I get some of the technical terms wrong but this was the first time I'd played poker since school) which got you 10,000 chips.
Each hour or so the minimum bid to stay in the game increases so you can start off playing for a minimum of 10 or 20 but by the end things get more serious as it's a 1,000 a time just to be involved.
The Poker Club and Stanley arranged for dealers to be in the casino early so that newcomers could learn the rules, think about tactics and understand which sets of cards beat others. After an hour or so of that and asking fairly daft questions we were ready to begin.
There are ten spaces per table and the law in the UK requires (for now at any rate) that all entry money is paid out in prize money - so you can see that Rangers need club registration money and sponsorship to make it earn at the moment but they obviously have their eyes set on the time when proper de-regulation comes in. So, for us it meant the winner would get £350 and the second placed £150.
I managed to stay in the game for three and a half hours before my chips ran out which I consider something of a miracle. Being involved even for a short while opens your eyes up to some of the tactics. My strategy was to sit on my cards and I never upped the stakes I only responded to the others and even if I had a weak hand I would sit in for a round of betting so that others couldn't gauge later on that I stayed in on weak or strong hands.
What did surprise me was the number of players who folded even when given only the initial two cards - as they night went on you could see that many players would bluff their way to a pot on the basis of a very weak hand - like a Queen High single card. Even if you had low cards like a 2 and a 5 I think it's worth seeing what else is dealt and you can easily come out with a flush or two or three of a pair.
My lack of bidding served me well in the earlier rounds as I could take pots from time to time fairly regularly - but as the night wore on you really did need to have more complicated tactics to bluff the others - it becomes a war of attrition when the stakes are raised and if you are in for a 500 minimum each time you really need to win otherwise your money goes down very quickly - and when you have a strong hand you need to be able to exploit it but have a track record of bidding on weaker hands so that the other players are never sure of what you are holding.
We had a fair cross-section of players at the table - some obviously highly-experienced - Doctor Sex and his missus Teresa are very good amateur players winning regularly in decent tournaments. A majority seem to have got themselves trained up by playing in training games online and then joining in games where they could learn and lose for small stakes on internet sites. I was surprised that some players who obviously had a fair bit of experience were prepared to stake everything on one hand very early in the evening by going “All In” with their entire pile. Whether this was a tactic to get an early money pile, a genuine tactic to win a hand or just bravado I couldn't work out.
After three and a half hours I was out - as the stakes got higher and the pace quickened I started to find my pile getting whittled down as the more experienced players racked up the pressure by adopting tactics which exploited even relatively weak hands. Now it was up to Vidmar, Doctor Sex and Satty Singh to battle it out. Satty lasted another hour before he got blasted out. Vidmar had by then got a good bank on the table and was using the volume of money to force the good doctor to bid on weaker hands and then force showdowns.
Regulations - one of the things which has put people off casinos in the past has been the hassle of regulations which meant you had to have a 24 hour cooling off period. Now you can register and play on the night so long as you have photographic ID with you - i.e., a passport.
Stanley provided some great features like the pre-game school with the dealers for the novices like myself, snacks and waitress service. After the game Vidmar and I retreated to spend some of his winnings at the bar and in the very smart new restaurant which despite it's modernity and plushness offeres a marvelous three courses for only £10.95. But despite that we treated ourselves to the bar menu with freshly made burgers and chicken wraps. Casinos in Glasgow tend to be busiest Monday and Tuesday so I'd say having a casino card is very hand if you want a more leisurely drink and something to eat in the city centre later on at night.
Overall it was an extremely enjoyable evening. Fifty quid might seem a bit steep but you'd spend that easily elsewhere in less than the three and a half hours I got for my dosh! Plus, if you are in to win £350 quid it's not a bad set of odds and in any case it's enough money to make everyone behave seriously but not sit in silence around the table - we had a good crowd and there were a lot of laughs during the evening.
Personally I think there is a huge market for the club - from the high stakes serious players - the 1st night tournament had a final pot of something around £6,000 I believe - to a game where £20 per punter would draw in a lot of hobby players from the internet looking to play face to face for the first time but not get burned.
For further info on the Rangers Poker Club check out their website:-
www.rangerspokerclub.com