Player's Stories

The Boys (L-R): Ram Vaswani, Ross Boatman, his brother Barny and Joe Beevers. Photo: Tony Buckingham.

It's not all bagel bakeries and flyovers. Hendon is more than just the gateway to Edgware. The mean streets of NW4 have also bred "The Hendon Mob" (or, to some, "The Rat Pack"): four top-flight British poker professionals who travel the world, "trap-checking" the innocent and "re-raising" the guilty. Between them they've won poker titles in France, Holland, Germany, Austria, Finland and Slovenia.

You might recognise them from Channel 4's Late Night Poker: each of the lads has made his mark on the £40,000 televised tournament. A new series kicks off on 5 October with a "celebrity special", and The Hendon Mob will be taking their seats as the weeks roll on.

They are: Ross Boatman, referred to by the others as "The Glamour" for his acting career (including nine years on London's Burning, but now more frequently to be found in a smoky casino cardroom: "As an actor, you just wait at home for the phone to ring. With poker, I can go out and make it happen." Ross's popular brother Barny ("The Humour"), master of the quip and the outrageous bluff, who'll distract you with a joke while raising £1,000 on nothing at all. "The swings can be cruel," he admits, "but there's no question of having money set aside for a rainy day. If you're holding aces and you get out-drawn, that is a rainy day." There's Porsche-driving Joe Beevers, a Mark Lamarr a-like described as "The Elegance" (and sure enough, he comes to the interview fresh from spending £1,800 at Armani), who used to play professional blackjack with his father and says: "The last proper job I had was at Citibank 10 years ago. With poker, you do what you want when you want." The fourth and youngest "mobster" is Ram Vaswani ("The Looks"), a former snooker player and current European Poker Champion. "Professional snooker didn't work out," he explains, "and I became a hustler. This is the same sort of thing - going round poker games, hustling where you can." The boys travel together to international tournaments and share hotel rooms - though not necessarily timetables.

"It's important to feel good when you're playing poker," believes Joe. "It's too easy to get into irregular sleep patterns and bad habits. In Vegas this January I got up every morning at six, spent two hours in the gym, played poker for 10 hours and then slept for eight. I came back with all the money, but it was tough." "Tougher for me," mutters Ross. "I was sharing a room with him. My lifestyle is exactly the one he says you shouldn't have. In the middle of the night, by which I mean eight o'clock in the morning, I'd come in having done my absolute pieces [ie, lost a lot of money] and Joe would be just getting up and going for a jog. I wanted to kill him." Roles were reversed on the last night, when Joe got so drunk he missed their return flight. "I thought I'd been playing dice till 11pm. But it was actually 11am." Barny, on the other hand, "takes advantage of the travelling. I've climbed mountains in Slovenia and walked round Helsinki in the snow at three in the morning. But you can only do that by getting no sleep at all." In terms of the team ethic, Joe explains: "We all bring something different to the group. For example, I'm always the one with the money ..." "... and the rest of us like each other," chuckles Barny. "Look," Joe continues more seriously: "It's very difficult to trust anybody in the world we move in. But when one of us is in trouble and needs £5,000, the others hand it straight over on their word. We know it's coming back."

"We still play hard against each other," stresses Barny. "Ram actually knocked me out of the final of the £80,000 Master Classics in Holland. But on my last hand, when we'd both shoved all our chips in with two cards still to come, we put our arms round each other and gave each other a little squeeze."

"I seem to remember you doing that before and after the tournament as well," muses Joe. "Back at the hotel."

Cue for more gales of laughter. Poker is a pretty heterosexual game.

The Hendon boys are now planning to make their team status official by seeking sponsorship. All four will be playing in the recordbreaking Poker Million tournament (first prize £1 million) on the Isle of Man this November. Run by Barry Hearn, the final will be broadcast live on Sky TV. The full cost of entry is £6,000 per player, but for a decent offer the boys will play as The Rolex Team, or The Rizla Team, or presumably the Bernie Smith of Watford team if any single rich eccentric out there fancies seeing four glamorous poker pros playing on TV in his colours.

"It's completely obvious," explains Barny, "that there's an explosion going on in poker. Lock, Stock, Barry Hearn, Channel 4, people playing on-line. It's like the new snooker, but with more characters. Poker is about money, people, conflict, pressure, and the English pitting their wits against Europe: all the things that make good sport and good TV. It's going to be massive, and we'll be massive within it." Gambling in general, of course, exploded in this country with the National Lottery. But funnily enough, The Hendon Mob aren't necessarily in favour.

"Scratchcards are too accessible to kids and people without money," says Barny. "It's a bit of a tax on desperation and stupidity. If you're going to be a gambler, you might as well be a poker player because you can learn to be a good one." But at the same time: "F***!" says Ram. "I forgot to buy my Lottery tickets. I was going to get a hundred quid's worth."

Anyone interested in contacting "The Boys" can reach them at thehendonmob@hotmail.com.

This article first appeared in The London Evening Standard and then on This Is London.

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