Poker in Scotland

[luckycharms]

Hello all.
I'm going to Scotland for the next 10 months on my year abroad, and I have no clue where anything is.

First of all, what games do they play in Scotland? Do they even play a lot of poker? Casinos? B&M games? If anyone knows anything about poker in Scotland, I'd love to hear about it.

Secondly, any great (cheap) bars in Edinburgh? Any good place to find "special" herbs?

Thanks guys, GL ALL

[nmt09]

Believe it or not the UK has had electricity and hot running water for quite a while now.

Seriously thought the UK has a fair few casino offerings, the main chain being Grosvenor. Also, unlike the USA you can travel almost anywhere in the UK in just a few hours so weekend trips to the bigger rooms wouldn't be unrealistic.

http://www.grosvenor-casinos.co.uk

There is also a fair few Stanley Casinos in the UK, I checked and they have three in Edinburgh, and one in Glasgow.

http://www.stanleycasinos.com

These places won't be as large as the American places so you might find them offering more cash games than tournament play.

Good luck

[jtr]

Don't know Scotland particularly but casino poker in the UK is pretty crap in my experience. For legal reasons the casinos are not able to run normal raked cash games, so instead they concentrate on tournaments. This might be OK, except legislation again prevents them from making a direct profit from these either, and so they run ridiculously poorly structured rebuy tournaments (I'm talking starting stacks of 10 big blinds, literally) in an effort to get the gamboolers in the door and playing roulette when they bust out. Some informal side cash games happen to accompany these tournaments, but you may be looking at self-dealing and other shadiness.

The most promising route for UK poker seems to be private clubs. The Gutshot Club in London looks interesting, and something similar recently started up in Glasgow.

Sorry to rain on your parade.