Queen sang:
#A brand new angle, highly commendable,
Seaside Rendezvous#
I'm afraid I can't be quite as pleasant about the Redezvous Casino, Brighton.
It is home to a varied assortment of characters, and it appears to be the last casino in Britain not to have banned Koresh. This would appear to show an unusual degree of common sense by the management, as the massive amounts he is prone to drop at the roulette wheel must surely outweigh the occasional havoc he causes when he claims to have put the £300 on red before the ball landed.
But the ongoing cheating in the poker room is far more problematic. It hosts what I believe is the largest casino cash game in the country to be self-dealt, and this, if nothing else, should set the warning lights flashing. I have heard too many tales of dirty dealings there for it to be a coincidence, and for that reason I have studiously refrained from playing any cash games there.
The management of the poker room has been flawed from the outset. The first manager was keen but hopeless, having been given a spectacularly good reference from his previous employer, Roy Houghton at Russell Square, just so that he could get rid of him. The subsequent manager was frog-marched of the premises by Special Branch, and things have got little better since then.
The stupid thing is that the measures needed to tighten up procedures there are relatively minor, a dealer for the cash games, no cash allowed to be in play, regular changing of the decks, and management that understands the game and is aware of the strokes that can be, and are, pulled every day.
Sorry Freddie, it's not a brand new angle, but the same old ones.
