Despite the proliferation of online casinos, in southwest London, card clubs are going strong. Unlike their pre-Victorian London, back-room predecessors, modern card rooms are fully licensed fully audited, and many are quite lavishly decorated.
Among the most popular is the Mint card room at the Genting Casino, opened in 2010. Three or four games are offered each evening with buy-ins at $60 to $90. Special events with higher stakes are regularly offered.
The Park Tower, Knightsbridge, hosted the London Blackjack Tournament in May 2015. It offers a large, luxurious gaming room just for card play.
Another choice is the Gloucester at Harrington Gardens, also an upscale atmosphere.
Further south, more mid-range game rooms abound, for example, Surbiton’s Takeagamble which offers regular poker nights and blackjack events and Casinos in Morden with specially dedicated card rooms.
Card players can travel even further south to find more down-to-earth, low-stakes locations that evoke the historical roots of London’s card rooms. One of those is Pollards Hill Poker Club, which is privately run although it’s located at the Royal Surrey Social Club, and regularly draws 30 players to its biweekly games held four nights a week. Stakes are low, including micro-stakes of 90-cent games.
