I think it depends a lot on the stakes you play relative to the charge. £6/hr at £0.50/£1 is pretty high in my opinion. I doubt you would pay that much in rake in one hour at those stakes unless you were super-loose.

surely 6£ an hour is beatable on a .50-1£ full ring table?

A lot of people talk about 9-10 big blinds per 100 hands being a reasonable win rate in the long run in No Limit Hold'em - that's about £3 an hour in a dealer-dealt game at the Vic and £2 or less in a self-dealt game. If you're paying £6 an hour, you need to be a really big winner in the game to still come out with a profit.

I suspect that at the Vic, it's still possible to come out ahead because the standard of play in those games is so laughable. But most people would probably be better off moving up to £1/£2, which is dealer-dealt and raked, as soon as they can afford it.

First of all, thanks to all who have helped with this so far - I really appreciate it.

I was away over the weekend so didn't get a chance to follow up, but I went to my bank today to ask for advice on what to do next.

They advised me to threaten legal action and to contact the police and the Office of Fair Trading if I didn't get a satisfactory result. So I have sent GQ Poker an official notice today (by post and email) giving them until May 7th to refund my money or deliver the table. After that I will do as my bank suggests.

Wish me luck!

PS. Rather satisfyingly, googling 'GQ Poker' now returns my cross-posted thread on The Hendon Mob forums as the third result. I hope this will warn others off this company in future.

Thanks guys - unfortunately the custom tables are not in their eBay shop so I bought from them directly. I also made what is in retrospect a really huge mistake, and sent them a bank transfer for the deposit.

ill email them looking for a table if they get back to me ill let you know

That would be fantastic - thanks for your help.

OK, I wanted to buy a really nice poker table for my flat, so I looked around the internet for companies that would build me a nice table and deliver it to the Isle of Man (finding both was difficult).

I stumbled across GQ Poker (www.gqpoker.co.uk). I hadn't heard of the company before, but their eBay store had excellent feedback and they were prompt and professional in replying to my emails. I'm not a paranoid sort of person, so I had no reason to doubt them.

After a bit of discussion via email, I sent my order along with a 50% deposit (£313) on the 7th Feb. From this point, things go downhill. The next I hear from them is on 26th Feb, when after some prompting by email they confirm that they have received my deposit and ordered the materials in.

According to them the table should take 2-3 weeks to complete. However it's now been two and a half MONTHS since I sent my deposit. GQ Poker have not responded to my emails and I haven't heard a peep from them since February.

Worryingly, both phone numbers I have for the company do not work. The one listed on their website, 07877 694309, gives me the message 'The number you have dialled cannot accept this call'. The other one I have, 01622 892140, plays the message 'This number does not receive incoming calls'.

Does anybody out there have experience with this company or have any alternative contact details for them? Is anyone acquainted with George Dyke, the representative I was talking to via email?

Did I just get scammed out of £313? If so, how easy do you think it will be to recover that money?

What part of Edinburgh do you live in Alex?

I live in Haymarket, which is really handy because I can walk to almost anywhere that is worth going.

I see your point about Wester Hailes, but to be honest I don't think its as bad as its reputation would suggest. Ever major city in the UK has a place like that. The good thing about Edinburgh is that its nice and out of the way, unlike Glasgow where you can take a wrong turn in the city centre and suddenly be lost in an intimidating estate surrounded by a gang of 'neds'.

I'm sure the drug problem is very real too (although from what I've heard its much less bad than it used to be), although I can't really comment on that since I don't have any experience in the area!

Edinburgh is indeed a beautiful city but it also has some of the most horrendous council estates in the UK. My sister moved out of there a few years ago after her then 14 yrs old daughter got beaten up by a middle ages couple for upsetting their daughter because they had argued.

It has as you say a very serious drug problem but any visitors going to Edinburgh obviously would not see any of the nasty side to city and yes I would highly recommend to anyone to visit as it truely is worth seeing.

I've lived here for five years now, and I've never encountered a snifter of trouble. I feel very safe walking around the city at night. Sure, there are bad parts of the city, but that's true of anywhere, and in Edinburgh you would never have a reason to go to somewhere like Niddrie or Sighthill unless you were en route to somewhere else.

The poker is terrible though. Almost all the casino tournaments are small rebuys with minute starting stacks, and there are no regular, well organised public cash games at all unless you want to play double flop six card Omaha with a bunch of grumpy old men. Thank god for the internet.

PS:  Im a n00b on the forum...who's Alex Scott and what is he doing with Boba Fett in his sig? 

Ahem.

One last thing - calling the turn is a mistake, at least according to the Fundamental Theorem of Poker, because if I could see my opponent's cards I would fold.

However, I think you're probably right that with the information I have about the players, and the way the hand has played out, I should call most of the time.

Yeah, but you can't worry about the worst case scenario all the time. You could flop a set and be up against a higher set if you call a raise with a medium pair like eights, but that shouldn't stop you doing it.

Oh, and by the way I am on the button in the hand I'm discussing, and I'm second to call the raise. Its not like I'm out of position and calling a raise in a small pot.

for me this is a fold preflop, but thats just me

Really? I can't bring myself to turn down a potentially profitable situation like this. Maybe if everyone was very short stacked, but not when they're sat there with 100 big blinds or more.

You win the biggest pots in No Limit poker when you outdraw someone and they can't fold their hand. J-10s is a great hand for doing this in my opinion.

I love the way this has turned into a Streetfighter thread. Blanka had a weak spot on his forehead when doing the electric shock by the way, and it was nothing a distant Hadoken couldn't handle!

It was a definite CALL. The fact you lost the hand is irrelevant. The call was, imo, the correct play.

You can call all-in pre-flop with AA & lose, but it's still the correct play.

Yeah, maybe I'm being too results oriented. But I'm very critical of myself, especially when I lose a hand, so I like to look for ways to avoid mistakes like calling here. However I think in this case its a mistake that is extremely difficult to avoid for all the reasons people have said.

Just curious Alex,

Have you ever taken a saver with another player, owning a % of each other in a tournament?

Yes - and I know where you're going with that. Needless to say I have never played differently against someone because I was involved in a swap with them. The only time my play has changed in a situation like this is in team events, where it's often a really bad strategic decision to knock out your team mate.

Okay.

I take one look at the size of the pot and call instantly.

We turn the cards over...

CallingMachine1 has the A-Q of diamonds and has the nut straight with the nut flush draw. Oh dear - very bad! Well done if you thought this was one of his possible holdings. I wasn't convinced that he'd call so much money with a draw... usually people either raise or fold with these kinds of hands. However with a third player in the pot, calling is definitely better than raising because you don't want to eliminate that player. He's living up to his name, anyway.

DJ820 had the 9-8 of a diamonds for an open-ended straight flush draw (yikes!). The river is the seven of diamonds, giving him a straight flush!

So, I go broke, CallingMachine1 loses a third of his stack (because he wins the side pot against me), and DJ820 triples up.

Clearly, calling the turn given what my opponents held was a huge mistake. I put in about half my stack as a slight favourite, and the rest as a huge underdog. I think the key is really that CallingMachine is betting into an empty side pot, so he's definitely not bluffing. Of all the hands he would play this way (and I believe that does include pocket aces), he might even be statistically more likely to have a hand that I can't beat than one I can.

I think the right play is to fold the turn despite the great pot odds, and I'm disappointed that I rushed the decision and came to the wrong conclusion. However, I find it really reassuring that nearly every person on every forum I've posted this on would call, and I've seen some very convincing reasons why I should in fact call. I'm trying not to be too results-oriented, but I think there is some key information in this hand that I just didn't make use of, and which suggests folding.

Cheers for your analysis guys.