What better way to spend a freezing cold winter’s morning than tucked up in a warm casino playing poker with a gambling legend? Ante up, Mr. Victor Chandler.
“I’ve completely balls-ed this up,” I say as I move all-in on a speculative A-10off. Insta-called, my opponent’s queens are good and he scoops the whole pot.
“I make that 1-1,” I concede. “Decider then?”
I order a Coke and the sharp-suited gent opposite me “an espresso with a drop of hot milk and a glass of water” as the 3rd game gets underway. The tanned old-schooler is Victor Chandler, head of the gambling empire that has moved from the racetrack to become a burgeoning online poker and casino business that is slowly reaching Asia (hence the change of name from VC to the more recognisable Victor Chandler with the main man’s photo on the branding. It seems to be working).
The gentleman bookmaker is over in England from his new home of Gibraltar (hence the tan) for a quick jaunt to promote vcpoker.com’s new promotion, the Beat Victor Challenge.
The competition comprises of four individual challenges with a total of $100,000 up for grabs. Ultimately it will see 10 players travelling to Spain to fight for the right to take on Victor himself and a shot at a $50,000 grand prize.
Smoking laws sadly prohibit Victor from lighting up his favourite cigar and he’s constantly nipping off to the balcony overlooking Leicester Square for sneaky drags. But I’m going nowhere - after all, there’s £1,000 for a charity of my choice up for grabs if I can take this game down. Meanwhile, as the blinds go in, and Victor returns to his seat, he begins regaling me with a debauched tale about a night out with his close friend, artist Lucian Freud (sadly, unprintable), followed quickly by his favourite poker story.
“Ok, here’s one you can print. I was in a hotel in Cheltenham with a fellow bookmaker, Alan Kingall. On walking in, we immediately realised we’d gone into the wrong hotel. The place is full of gangsters, guys who you try and avoid when you go to the races…”
“...you knew they were gangsters?”
“Well, we knew them all! There was an ex-bare knuckle-boxing champion of England and a guy called Jack the Murderer; they were all heavies. They started playing cards and we were sitting in the next room. Just then, a bunch of rugby players came in, all big guys, totally drunk. One of the rugger players told one of the hard men to stop smoking his cigar. The gangster refused of course and the player flew across the table and wrestled the guy to the ground. It all kicks off and in a few minutes there were 6 rugby players all lying on the floor. The police came and the gangsters knew that if the police checked their backgrounds there’d be trouble. It was a scene to behold.”
So there was a lot of poker going on back in those early days?
“I used to play a lot of 5-card Stud, mainly in the evenings with other bookmakers. I don’t think anyone plays it any more. It was all bookmakers and some of the trainers; all good players! I remember one Cheltenham where a bookie lost £15,000 at a session. We didn’t see him again!”
As I steadily build my stack up, first with a couple of post-flop steals, then with a nice straight on the river, Victor tells me a little about his early days, when he suddenly found himself the head of the major bookmakers back in the 70s.
“I used to go to the races with my Dad as a kid. I think it was at Fontwell races when I was 11 or 12. He used to give me the race card. I came away a winner.
“Then my father got ill in late 1972. I was based in Spain working for another company. My mother phoned me to say I had to come back to England and that’s when I realised my father was seriously ill. He died in 1974 and that’s when I took over the business. I was 22.”
I can’t imagine what it must have been like being thrust into a position like that at such a young age.
“It was total panic, but I was lucky that I had some help and some good people around who supported me,” says Victor. “We gave up most of our pitches at the racecourses and betting shops, then in 1977 really was the turnaround. We started to attract a few big clients and the shops started taking off. The ‘80s were total boom time.
“For people who weren’t around in racing in those days, it’s hard to fathom just how much money was around. At one night meeting in Windsor before Royal Ascot started, we took £1 million in bets. These days, you’d be hard pushed to get £20,000.”
Victor Chandler was one of the first bookmakers to take extremely high limit bets. During the 1994 World Cup the company saw big money coming in from the Far East. It was the point where Victor considered opening up in Asia.
“We got the license in Gibraltar and by Euro ’96 it was becoming huge. We had 20 mobiles in the office as we couldn’t get enough phone lines in Gibraltar!
“Us moving probably helped lead to the demise of the racecourses. When we moved most of our targets were the big gamblers from Asia. We still have a high rollers’ department but most of our business is now from online poker, casinos, and games. We’re in discussions about getting into financial spread betting as well.”
So, will we see the online business coming back onshore, as Gordon Brown is hoping for?
“I can’t see it coming back on-shore. We’ll always move with the industry but the main bulk of our business doesn’t come from the UK any more,” explains Victor. “I’m too settled in Gibraltar anyway. We’d consider coming back to the UK but I can’t see it ever happening.”
As we move into a new year, the US has itself a president who may be able to alter the course of online poker Stateside. But Victor is pragmatic on the subject.
“I think you might see America legalising the game state by state. I can see it happening as a way of raising taxes. For example, California will have a state licence and wouldn’t be able to take business from, say, New Mexico. You’d have to be a California resident to play on a machine in California. That’s the way it looks at the moment.
“I’m still not sure that if it was challenged, it would have stood. Originally it was applied to sports betting but they seemed to use the law any way they wanted to.”
Finally, I get into my stride and I’m a decent stack in the 3rd game decider. All in with J-Q I manage to spike a jack on the river against Victor’s A-6 and £1,000 is on its way to Cancer Research UK, courtesy of Victor Chandler. What a gent. |
