Hendon Mob Poker

by admin
Paul Seaton

The Hendon Mob is the most comprehensive database of poker players, venues, festivals, events and results to be found anywhere on the Net. It is kept constantly up to date with the latest results as they arrive. Visit the Hendon Mob’s website. Total life earnings: $21,384,436. Latest cash: $21,483 on 06-Sep-2020. Click here to see the details of Adrian Mateos' 168 cashes. The Hendon Mob released a statement today announcing not only that it was ending the company’s relationship with Full Tilt Poker but also that the Mob’s members were handing over their Full. Run by the Mob, It is the biggest live poker database and contains statistics on just about any player who has placed in the cash in any major tournament, worldwide. There are also details of every major tournament and poker tips from the Hendon Mob themselves and other famous poker players who are friends of the mob. The Hendon Mob are a group of four professional poker players from London. The members are: Joe Beevers, Barny Boatman, Ross Boatman, and Ram Vaswani. Joe Beevers is the only member of the group who actually comes from Hendon, a district of London. The Hendon Mob first became recognized for their appearances on the TV show, Late Night Poker.

Table Of Contents

Twenty years ago, four men appeared in the British newspaper The Evening Standard in which they were described as poker’s next big thing. The author of the piece was later to be two-time EPT winner Vicky Coren.

Hailing from North London, The Hendon Mob was a poker Rat Pack to be feared and admired in equal measure. They had nicknames, they had swagger and they had a knack for winning.

Two decades later, the three words 'The Hendon Mob' are synonymous with poker. From the poker database that would be their legacy to the WSOP bracelets and new endeavors that form their checkered history, the time is right to take a deep dive into The Hendon Mob — then and now.

We spoke to all four members of the group to piece together the past and find out what the future holds for founding members Joe Beevers, Barny Boatman, Ross Boatman and Ram Vaswani.

The Hendon Mob Beginnings

We start, naturally, at the beginning. It’s the mid-1990’s. Britpop is in the air and the boys are about to get the band together.

“Someone gave me a tip for a dog,” says Vaswani, the former professional snooker player who went from hanging out in snooker halls as a teenager to picking up a deck of cards. He loved to gamble too, and the story of the first Hendon Mob meeting would arise from this particular gambling tale. This particular day, that would bring about the first Hendon Mob meeting.

Ross Boatman: 'When I left that program, nothing touched it as far as TV success was concerned, but my interest in poker was very strong and, bit by bit, it gave me something else.'

“I was friends with a guy called Jeff who told me that we needed to back a dog,” says Beevers, the other man in the start of the story. “He stops outside the betting shop. He says ‘Here’s £200. Go and stand in that red telephone box by the betting shop and wait for it to ring.’ I stood in the phone box and after four or five minutes it rang. I picked up the phone and the voice said ‘2.30 at Romford, back Trap 6.’

Armed with this information, Beevers backed the dog to win and even had a cheeky £30 on it himself. The dog in question had started at odds of 7/4 and went off at 4/6 as the odds-on favorite. It lost.

“Five or six weeks later, I was playing in a private poker game in Mill Hill and the doorbell went,' Beevers recalled. 'I couldn’t see because we were playing but I could hear a voice. It was ‘Romford 2.30, back trap six. And as he walked into the room. He was Ram Vaswani. I said, ‘You’re the guy in the phone box’ and he laughed.”

Private Games Bring the Mob Together

“That was the first time I spoke to [Beevers],' Vaswani said. 'I came to a game that he was running with another friend of ours. I started playing in his private game and that led to us having the game in Hendon.”

Barny Boatman: 'It was my fault — I got him into poker. I was always into games.'

Vaswani and Beevers became friends, and when Beevers started his own game, Vaswani helped out. The two men already played private games two or three times a week. Vaswani had started out playing five card stud in the snooker halls, but it was dealer’s choice at Beevers’ flat. If you could name it and deal it, you could play it, and for money.

Hendon Mob Poker Tournament Schedule

“We played a lot of people in Luton five or six days a week, and it was before the 2005 Gaming Act,” explains Beevers. “There was no online poker and casinos closed at 4 p.m. - they’d announce 'last three hands.' Throughout London, different people had private games.”

Eventually, the Boatmans found their way to Beevers' game. “Ross became a regular,' said Beevers. 'After a while, Ross brought Barny along.'

Ross Boatman was the most well-known name of the four men at the time, but not for his prowess at the poker table. He was an actor in the hit TV show London’s Burning, which centered around a capital city fire brigade. You can watch some of the show on YouTube.

“London’s Burning was a massive show for me when I was younger, largely because there was only four TV channels,' said Beevers. 'It was on at 9 p.m. on a Sunday night and it peaked at 20 million viewers. It was massive.”

Eventually, Ross left the show and took to poker.

“When I left that program, nothing touched it as far as TV success was concerned, but my interest in poker was very strong and, bit by bit, it gave me something else,' Ross Boatman recalled. 'I’m not sure exactly what, but the excitement, independence and not having to be reliant on someone to get jobs for me was great.”

The Final Link

Liberated from his acting frustrations, Boatman brought his older brother along. Barny Boatman was forty and had been around the block. He’d been a journalist and had also been involved in a project in the mid-90s called Channel Cyberia — a website involving games and gambling. It had poker stories in it and a ‘Fantasy Punters League’ where real odds were used to work out the best gambler over time.

Joe Beevers: 'At the time, there were 23 London casinos, and between us, we got barred from 19 of them for playing blackjack.'

Barny was always close to his younger brother. He had another brother who was closer to him in age, but they had a classic sibling rivalry. There was always an element of protection in Barny’s love of Ross.

“Ross and I were playing in a poker game in Archway, where we both lived at the time. It was a combination of some of Ross’s acting mates from London’s Burning and a few friends of mine. It was very recreational, but it was starting to get big in terms of money going back and forth. Ross and I got more serious about the game.”

He continued: 'Ross was my kid brother, I was always very proud of him and we always had a lot in common,” says Barny, before a pause, and an admission. “It was my fault — I got him into poker. I was always into games. Me and my mates used to play poker round the kitchen table and Ross wanted to join in. I taught him to play and he loved it. Later on, we were both playing with separate friends and our games merged.”

Barny Boatman was a journalist and Ross Boatman was an actor. It didn’t take them long to find the game in Hendon and become firm friends with Beevers and Vaswani. At times, the games would run from 7 p.m. on a Monday night until 5 a.m. on Wednesday morning. The games got big. The four men got to know each other.

The Hendon Game

The roots of the poker game in Hendon grew out of gambling origins that ran deep in Beevers. “My dad took me to the Golden Nugget on Shaftsbury Avenue to introduce me to blackjack. At the time, there were 23 London casinos, and between us, we got barred from 19 of them for playing blackjack.”

Ram Vaswani: 'I’d gone to Vegas with Joe to play a festival at the Four Queens. But it would be a few years before the four of us went to Vegas together.'

It was while playing blackjack that Beevers started playing poker, and that experience developed into a lifelong love of the game. It wasn’t long before he set up his private game: The Hendon game.

“The four of us were hardcore in that game, obviously playing against each other,' Beevers said. 'I had a dedicated poker room in my flat, and I had a snooker light, the large drop-down one over the baize. Everyone smoked, the room was thick with tar.”

Barny Boatman was a fan of the scene at the Hendon game. “Their game was much more of a classic mixture of people who did nothing else as far as you could tell,” says Barny. “We were playing in casinos, but we were drawn to Joe and Ram’s game.”

The crew of four ran together in the England poker scene and at the Grosvenor Victoria, they earned themselves a nickname that stuck.

Joe Beevers: “We’d walk into 'The Vic' and John Kabbaj would stick his head up from the Omaha game and say ‘Oh, here come the Hendon Mob.’ That was how we got the name.”

“We’d walk into 'The Vic' and John Kabbaj would stick his head up from the Omaha game and say ‘Oh, here come the Hendon Mob.’ That was how we got the name,” Beevers explained. They would later use that very name for the website they'd create, and it was also around the time they began traveling together to play the card game that bound them.

“I’d gone to Vegas with Joe to play a festival at the Four Queens,” says Vaswani. “But it would be a few years before the four of us went to Vegas together.”

“It was nice, though, because we had a camaraderie,” says Ross. “We could always rely on each other, learn about the game together. It was nice to have a crew.”

Hendon Dreams Start to Brew

The crew was enjoying some local notoriety but they were clearly ready for bigger things, or at least the idea of them. The four spoke about ideas for promoting the game of poker and trying to get sponsorship.

“We tried to find a way of getting filmmakers or journalists to pay for us to go to Las Vegas,” says Barny. “I was hawking around a TV idea about filming a group of British players going to play in the World Series of Poker. But nothing was ever going to come of it. We were just dreamers.”

But the dream was about to come true, and in more ways than one. The Hendon Mob was formed, and it was only the beginning of an adventure that would take them around the world. Read more in our upcoming Part 2.

  • Tags

    Joe BeeversBarny BoatmanRoss BoatmanRam VaswaniHendon Mob

  • Related Players

    Ram VaswaniBarny BoatmanJoe BeeversRoss Boatman

History and Information

TheHendonMob was founded as a online tracking website for live tournaments in 2001. The original Hendon Mob which started and gave name to the online version was created by four friends from London England. The guys met each other at a home game in Hendon London in the early nineties and quickly became friends. The friendship took them all over England as well as the rest of the world to play poker and they quickly became known as the Hendon Mob. The name has stuck with them ever since, becoming increasingly more famous year by year for their poker skill and website.

TheHendonMob created the website in response to the increasing popularity of poker, starting with just some blogs, pictures, tips and stories later turned into having created the most comprehensive live tournament poker database in the world.

TheHendonMob follows almost all official live poker tournaments played in casinos as well as bigger international poker clubs, tracking the results and saving it in their database. The data's are then released on the website, making it possible to search any player that cashed in the tournament.

Over the years, TheHendonMob has tracked over 70,000 different live tournaments from all over the world and has a database of over 250,000 players. This makes it by far the biggest live tournament database existing and is used daily by thousands of people. TheHendonMob is also a great tool to use when you are playing live poker, as you can look up all the players at your table if you know their names. Chances are that if they have ever cashed in any serious tournament, they will be listed there. TheHendonMob provides a full list of cashes, stats and in some cases also a bio of each player. This is very useful to be able to see if you are playing a rookie or a pro in a live tournament.

TheHendonMob gets all their tournament results either directly from the casinos and poker clubs or via other tracking websites. Being the leading website they have deals with almost all casinos and tournament series about getting the results right after they have created.

Hendon Mob Poker

In 2013 TheHendonMob was sold to Global Poker Index (GPI) in order to secure that the website would continue to provide stats for the players as well as improve the time of the statistics to come online and cover more tournaments. TheHendonMob was very pleased with the sale to GPI as they only saw them as being able to continue running their site the proper way.

Hendon Mob Poker Database

How Does It Work?

TheHendonMob provides information about players who has played live tournaments. Unlike most tracking sites that show all tournaments played, TheHendonMob only shows the tournaments that a player has cashed in. This means that you will not be able to look up if a player is a major loser as you will only be able to see his cashes. To look up a player, simply enter his full name and TheHendonMob will find the player for you if they have ever cashed in a tournament covered by them.

TheHendonMob provides a few key information about the players that are registered in their database, some of the information's are: Date of tournament, Country of tournament, Country of player, Event played, final position and prize won. Each event is also clickable so you will be able to see all information regarding each event that a player has cashed in.

TheHendonMob also provides a biography about special players, Twitter account info of pro's, stats about the players, graphs, gallery and a subscribe menu to subscribe to any new information about players of interest.

Having the biggest live tournament tracking site, TheHendonMob also have a lot of different ranking lists divided into categories and sub categories. Here you will be able to find information about everything possible and some of the most popular categories are:

New York Hendon Mob

  • All Time Money List
  • All Time Most Popular Player
  • WPT All Time Money List
  • WSOP Rankings
  • Venue Rankings
  • Women's All Time List
  • EPT All Time Money List

And many more categories full of fun and useful information. They have all bigger tournament series in the world covered with all the statistics you could possibly imagine.

Other Features

Besides providing statistics about tournaments and players in tournaments, TheHendonMob also have other very useful features to take advantage of such as:

Forum: TheHendonMob has a very active forum where everything from tournament results to staking is discussed as well as non poker topics. With their many thousand daily visitors, the forum always has an interesting subject to read more about.

Live Poker Tournament List: Of course TheHendonMob offers a live poker tournament list for players to see which events are coming up in the near future as well as look up older events. The list contains all the events they will be covering and is a comprehensive list of tournaments, poker festivals and special events. If you are looking for an event to play in the future you will be able to find one by using their guide.

Poker Calculator: In the online poker calculator you can calculate the odds of you winning a hand by entering your own and opponents hand as well as a flop, turn and river. The calculator can calculate every street from pre-flop to river and can provide a good indication about if you had a bad-beat or gave your opponent one.

The Hendon Mob The Official Global Poker Index - GPI Rankings

Beginners Guide: To help new players come to a better understanding about the basics of poker, TheHendonMob offers beginner guide's that provides all basic information and rules about poker. There are several different articles and covers many different variants of poker as well.