Last reviewed 27 October 2026
Nine tables on the garden level of a house with twenty-nine bedrooms, open five evenings a week. Everything on this page is arranged with a person, in the building.
Where the house stands
The house would rather see a guest play for an evening, enjoy it and go up to bed than play until the tables close and think about it on the road to Prague. That is not a slogan, and it shapes how the room is run. There are nine tables, and the room closes at three. Credit is not given at any hour, there is no cash machine anywhere in the building, and the bar stops serving before the tables close.
Over-18s, checked every visit
The age is eighteen, and a document is checked at the door every time you come in, including for guests staying in the house. A passport, a national identity card or a driving licence showing a date of birth will do. Nobody under 18 enters at any hour, and in thirty years no reason has been good enough.
What staff will do, there and then
- Hold a limit. Name your figure before you sit down; it is written and kept for the evening. Ask them to propose one and they will.
- Tell you the time. Say when you want to be told and you are told, without any fuss.
- Keep your place. Twenty minutes upstairs in the reading room and the seat is still there.
- Keep you out for a stretch. Tell reception you do not want to be admitted for a number of days and it is written down and followed.
- Self-exclusion. Signed at reception, effective that evening, lifted only by returning to that desk in person. It cannot be lifted by telephone, whoever is calling and whatever they say.
None of this is on the website, by design. It is all a conversation with somebody who can see your face.
Worth noticing in yourself
- Staying longer than you decided to, on more evenings than you decided to.
- Coming back the next night chiefly to recover the night before.
- Being vague with whoever you travelled with about how the evening went.
- Thinking about the tables while you are at the colonnade you came here for.
- Money meant for the rest of the stay going downstairs instead.
Any one of these alone proves nothing. Three together are worth thinking about hard, and the staff here have had that conversation with guests before, without making an event of it.
How staff are trained
Everyone who works that floor is briefed before their first shift and twice a year afterwards: how to set and hold a limit, how to handle a guest who has drunk too much, how to take a self-exclusion discreetly, and when to fetch the duty manager instead of dealing with it alone. The duty manager is in the house every evening the room is open.
How to ask
Say it to whoever is on the floor, or at reception between seven in the morning and eleven at night. You do not need an appointment or an explanation, and it is dealt with at the time.