My vision of poker is different.
A new poker club has opened in West London and I'm not sure what to make of it. I have always longed to see poker blossom like this and the new club, which I haven't yet visited, seems to fit my vision of the ideal card room in several ways.

The most important thing is that it's not a casino and thus won't treat poker as the poor cousin of other games. The fact that the game is treated like this in the casino industry has held it back for ages. Casino card rooms are run with the objective of keeping costs down rather than increasing profits. That's why you don't see dealers offered in the cash games in Brighton or earlier starts in Walsall. They are also prone to close on the whim of a new manager. It's extremely frustrating.

The next most important thing is that the club is on the outskirts of London, away from high city-centre rents meaning plenty of parking space and a greater chance of profitability, provided that people turn up to play. So far, so good.

The problem though is that I can't see what the club is going to offer. The Victoria is still busy with its pot-limit cash games and thrice-a-year festivals. The Gutshot club is busy with its small competitions and cash games in central London. What will make people go to somewhere so far out west in preference to their present haunts? Is there really enough demand for a third club? As things stand I don't think so, which is why I think that it should go for broke and aim to appeal to a totally new customer base. I mean one that isn't already accustomed to playing poker at a UK casino or at Gutshot.

Ever since I first went to the Concord Card Club in Vienna, I have wanted only one thing for London - a clone of the same operation. It's unusual in Europe but any American would instantly recognise the Concord as being similar to one of the Californian card clubs, like the Bicycle, Hustler and Commerce, to name but a few of them. These clubs operate 24 hours per day and cater to thousands. They are like football pitches.

Why are they so big? It's partly because there are more people interested in poker in the US, but it's also because the American card rooms have limit poker, a version of the game that is far more beginner friendly. Limit poker prevents newcomers from going broke on their first hand and allows them to get more play for their money. A good player will just as surely beat a bad one at limit in the long term as in the pot-limit game, but the bad player is much more likely to come back to the limit game. It's the difference between making a living shearing a sheep and slaughtering one. Too many British players want to be the butcher rather than the shearer. It's one reason our card rooms are smaller.

But how could the new club get that sort of business going? I don't know. I'm reminded of the so-called `Irishman's answer' : "I wouldn't start from here". The current starting position is that the existing player base of the UK is mostly uninterested or hostile to limit. Some admit to enjoying it on their holidays to the US, but many won't play it even then and instead scour Vegas and LA looking for pot limit or no limit games. It's partly because they don't enjoy limit hold'em. That's their business, but it shouldn't put them off the limit betting format, as there is a great deal of fun to be hand playing seven-card stud, omaha hi-lo and seven-card stud hi-lo as limit games.

The growing popularity of no-limit hold'em caused by television coverage and internet take-up is another barrier. The world is now full of 18-year old boys wanting to play no-limit because it's a `man's game', whatever that is supposed to mean. Setting yourself all-in on or before the flop, so that you can't be bluffed out on the river by a scare card is considered manly now. I've thought about explaining that `real men leave themselves with decisions to make on the last card' as a counter-argument but to date haven't summoned up the energy to make the point.

But I digress. I hope they have a business plan to draw in newcomers who don't have preconceptions of how poker should be played and who are receptive to the idea of limit poker. But I fear that this aim, while understood by the club's owners, won't get the priority attention that it deserves and will be put off indefinitely. Instead I can see the temptation for them to go for the quick `land grab' to be had by announcing a tournament schedule with guaranteed prize pools, which would quickly fill the club with the same people who turn up to the ?20 and ?30 comps already held in UK casinos. Such people may turn up in numbers when guarantees are offered and could provide a quick source of income, but won't be a long term source of serious profit. They have little intention of playing the game for much longer after being knocked out. There is also the problem that tournaments cause immense short term pressure on parking space. For a 7.30pm tournament, you can be sure that half the field intends to arrive at 7.25pm. Although the club has a lot of space for cars, its entrance from the A40 is rather sudden and not that wide; not somewhere I would want to have lots of cars all trying to cram in at the last minute.

Will the club go in the direction I propose? I doubt it. I seem to be totally out of step with what everyone else wants, or at least with the views of those who form popular opinion. For example, take this from Jesse May earlier this year: "The game of poker today is large field tournament poker". Got that? Those of you who play online sit'n'goes for six hours a day and the thousands of you who play cash games online or in the bricks-and-mortar clubs aren't playing poker really! You don't count. Hell, you don't even exist as far as the media is concerned.

I'll let you know what I think when I finally visit the place.