The Hendon Mob are a group of four professional

poker Poker is a family of Card game#Comparing games, comparing card games in which Card player, players betting (poker), wager over which poker hand, hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, with varying rules i ...

players from

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

: Joe Beevers, Barny Boatman,

Ross Boatman Ross Maxim Boatman (born 3 March 1964) is an English actor, professional poker player and a member of the poker-playing group the Hendon Mob. He is known for the role of firefighter Kevin Medhurst in the ITV (TV channel), ITV drama series ''Lon ...

, and

Ram Vaswani Ram "Crazy Horse" Vaswani (born 1 September 1970, from Finchley, Greater London) a former professional poker player and the youngest member of The Hendon Mob, a group of professional poker players. He resides in Finchley with his wife Jackie a ...

. The name of the group was first publicised by the ''

Evening Standard The ''London Standard'', formerly the ''Evening Standard'' (1904–2024) and originally ''The Standard'' (1827–1904), is a long-established regional newspaper published weekly and distributed free newspaper, free of charge in London, Engl ...

'' newspaper in September 2000. Joe Beevers is the only member of the group who actually comes from

Hendon Hendon is an urban area in the London Borough of Barnet, northwest London northwest of Charing Cross. Hendon was an ancient Manorialism, manor and parish in the county of Middlesex and a former borough, the Municipal Borough of Hendon; it has ...

, but the others played in Hendon. The Mob first became recognised for their appearances on the televised poker programme ''

Late Night Poker ''Late Night Poker'' is a British television series that helped popularize poker in the 2000s. It used "under the table" cameras that enabled the viewer to see each player's cards. The show originally ran for six series between 1999 and 2002. ...

'' (1999–2002). The Hendon Mob also regularly attends the annual

World Series of Poker The World Series of Poker (WSOP) is a series of poker tournaments held annually in Paradise, Nevada, and since 2004, sponsored by Eldorado Resorts, Caesars Entertainment. It dates its origins to 1970, when Benny Binion invited seven of the best ...

and other major tournaments. They have dozens of

in the money ''In the Money'' is a 1958 American comedy film directed by William Beaudine and starring The Bowery Boys. The film was released on February 16, 1958, by Monogram Pictures, Allied Artists Pictures and is the 48th and final film in the series. It ...

results between them. The Mob were used in series one of the British con-art documentary series '

The Real Hustle ''The Real Hustle'' is a BBC British television series created by Objective Productions, Alexis Conran and R. Paul Wilson for BBC Three. The show demonstrates confidence and magic tricks, distraction scams and proposition bets performed on memb ...

'. Presenters R. Paul Wilson and

Alexis Conran Alexis Conran is a British actor, writer and presenter on TV and radio, who currently hosts the weekend afternoon show on Times Radio and a number of consumer advice programmes for 5. He is also known for co-hosting the BBC Three show '' The R ...

, posing as poker novices filming a documentary, beat the Mob by smuggling in decks stacked to their advantage.

Sponsorship

In 2004 and 2005, the Mob was sponsored by Prima Poker to the tune of $2 million worth of worldwide tournament

buy-in Buying in may refer to: * Buying in (poker), a tournament entrance fee *Buying in (securities), a process in which a buyer whose seller fails to deliver the securities contracted for, can "buy in" the securities from a third party *Management buy- ...

fees. In exchange they played on the online Prima poker-room network. As part of the tour, the Mob challenged four-player teams of various nationalities to heads-up matches, culminating with the UK versus the

U.S. The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous ...

in the inaugural Prima Transatlantic Cup in 2004. The Mob had won each of these international team matches until falling 3–1 to the US team of

Phil Ivey Phillip Dennis Ivey Jr. (born February 1, 1977) is an American professional poker player who has won eleven World Series of Poker bracelets, one World Poker Tour title, and appeared at nine World Poker Tour final tables. Ivey is regarded by num ...

Andy Bloch Andrew Elliot Bloch (born June 1, 1969) is a professional poker player. He holds two electrical engineering degrees from MIT and a JD from Harvard Law School. Blackjack While studying at MIT, Bloch became part of the MIT blackjack team, featur ...

Chris Ferguson Christopher Philip Ferguson (born April 11, 1963) is an American professional poker player. He has won six World Series of Poker events, including the 2000 WSOP Main Event, and the 2008 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship. Ferguson is ...

, and Paul Wolfe. The Mob's deal with Prima expired at the end of 2005. The Mob were then sponsored by

Full Tilt Poker Full Tilt Poker is an Irish online poker card room and online casino that opened in June 2004. Formerly privately owned by Tiltware, LLC and later by the Rational Entertainment Group, the site was acquired by The Stars Group (then known as Amaya ...

until September 2011, when the online poker site was accused of fraud. The deal was reinstated when Full Tilt Poker reached an agreement with the U.S Department of Justice.

Other ventures

The Hendon Mob is also a website that includes the biggest poker player database worldwide, that collects the results of every

poker tournament A poker tournament is a tournament where players compete by playing poker. It can feature as few as two players playing on a single table (called a " heads-up" tournament), and as many as tens of thousands of players playing on thousands of tabl ...

in the world since 2000, indexed by location, date, and player. The origin of the information contained in the database was queried in a court action brought by rival website Pokerpages.com, and information sourced from Pokerpages.com has since been removed from the database. In July 2013 the Mob's website was acquired by the

Global poker index The Global Poker Index (GPI) is a leaderboard index that ranks over 450,000 live tournament poker players in the world. The GPI poker rankings are updated on a weekly basis. Players’ performances are assessed by their finishing positions in pok ...

References

External links

Official siteBluff Magazine interviewGlobal Poker IndexThe Hendon Mob Money Race since 1971
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hendon Mob Nicknamed groups of sportspeople People from Hendon Sportspeople from the London Borough of Barnet