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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.

“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.”

Hendon Mob Wiki

“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.

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Hendon Mob Money List

Table Of Contents

The early years of the millennium were the glory years of The Hendon Mob, four men from London who became poker’s first pop group. Ram Vaswani, Joe Beevers, Ross Boatman and Barny Boatman had made their name with The Hendon Mob website and their appearances on 'Late Night Poker,' a pioneering television show. You can read up on those exploits in Part Two here.

Over the ensuing decade, the four men would conquer the poker world. They were the best of times, and the glory days for the four best friends. Having been given poker’s first million-dollar poker sponsorship, the lads went on tour, and they would stay on the road for several years. It was time to get serious with the Mob.

Early Success

Vaswani took down the inaugural EPT Dublin Main Event in October 2004. He would then go agonizingly close to winning two EPT Main Events just three months later when Noah Boeken pipped him to the trophy in Copenhagen. Ironically, it would be their old cohort and friend Victoria Coren-Mitchell who would claim that first (and so far only) double-EPT honor. Vaswani, however, still has regrets over getting so close fifteen years ago.

“I was absolutely gutted not to win two in a row. The game was very exciting at the time, especially for us, because we were the first people to get a sponsorship deal. The EPT was like the European version of the WPT. It was nice to win one early.”

Huge prize money, television coverage, and a glittering trophy catapulted Vaswani into the stratosphere. With their deal of sharing five percent of winnings with each Mob member, the four of them were all benefitting from the success. For Vaswani, having his friends close to him for the journey made all the difference.

“I don’t think I could ever have done the same thing on my own. I couldn’t have traveled from festival to festival without my close friends. We were literally traveling non-stop.”

'We all got results and we were writing diaries on the website, because suddenly we had a lot of content and resources.”

Once they were badged up, their profile was raised even further. News of their sponsorship made it to their ‘home’ casino of The Vic, courtesy of Ross Boatman.

“I remember a guy at the Vic called Ramin Sai. I’d go in and play the Omaha game every afternoon. He’d always ask ‘Any news on the sponsorship?’ When I told him we had a million-dollar deal, he choked on his tea and spat it all over the table!”

Barny Boatman had helped negotiate that million-dollar deal more than anyone, and Prima Poker were as good as their word. A PR company was involved, and the press was interested. Media built up about The Hendon Mob on both sides of the Atlantic. It helped that, as Barny Boatman describes, all four men hit the ground running on the poker side of things.

“The first festival we went to was an Omaha tournament and all four of us made the final. Ross and I finished heads up and I won it. We all got results and we were writing diaries on the website because suddenly we had a lot of content and resources.”

Deal Extension and Dissolution

Prima Poker was delighted of course, and helped in every way they could, too. The website grew and their fanbase did the same. Everything was getting bigger and better. Everyone was happy.

“Prima Poker were getting a lot of media and we were getting results. They renewed for a second year and we went around again. We’d grown as a brand and business, and I don’t suppose that would have happened if we hadn’t taken that phone call from Roger Raatgever.”

'We’d grown as a brand and business, and I don’t suppose that would have happened if we hadn’t taken that phone call from Roger Raatgever.”

Over the coming years, the Mob would have huge success. Beevers remembers Ross Boatman being top of the tree in live tournaments in 2002. Afterward, Beevers had his fair share of success, winning the Irish Open in 2003. Then, he finished seventh in the $25,000 WPT at the Bellagio for $188,000 in 2005 and in 2007, he won the Poker Million and the Great British Poker Tour.

After the first two years, Prima Poker and The Mob went their separate ways, a good deal for both parties having come to its natural conclusion. But the day after that happened, Barny Boatman was at a tournament in Copenhagen when a call came through.

The Full Tilt Years

Boatman went outside and recalls taking a memorable call in the middle of a Danish blizzard.

“It was Howard Lederer at Full Tilt. I remember talking to Howard Lederer about the various possibilities of how we could be involved with Full Tilt. We were the first European players they’d come to.”

Thanks to their deal with Prima Poker, The Hendon Mob were hot property. A website that was pulling in huge traffic in the middle of a poker boom that followed Chris Moneymaker's WSOP Main Event win was a very valuable position.

“It’s all about the database; everyone knows that they can find any results, any festivals that are coming up, and any prize money that has been won,” Vaswani explained. “As we hit the sponsorship deal, it got bigger and bigger.”

“The Full Tilt Poker deal took us to another level again.'

Beevers was the effective CEO and did almost everything on the office side of the job, but Barny Boatman helped with a lot of the legwork. When it came down to it, the four men were equals, and that’s what made The Hendon Mob work so well.

“Barny and I took a small salary from the business,” says Beevers. “We also took an equal share in the business itself, but that was more of a recognition that we were doing the day-to-day stuff. At its peak, we had seven full-time staff and two or three part-timers.”

Attendance at worldwide festivals had exploded and The Hendon Mob were everywhere, including the poker capital of the world.

“The Full Tilt Poker deal took us to another level again. Those were exciting times. Poker was really growing, TV were putting shows on, and everyone was writing features about us,” Barny Boatman recalled. Ross Boatman fondly remembers the first time The Hendon Mob walked into Las Vegas as a foursome.

“There were legends of the game, Doyle Brunson and Phil Helllmuth, talking about us, talking about the Hendon Mob. We had immediate celebrity for the mere fact that we’d got this deal. It was the beginning of sponsorship and we were ground-breakers.”

Vegas Lore

Far from the old days of having to pay out of pocket, doors were now opening for them as they traveled the globe to play.

“Every year, the four of us would make a pilgrimage to Binion’s for the World Series,” explained Beevers. “We paid for very little because everything was comped in those days. We’d stay in the Golden Nugget for free, we’d eat and drink for free, and people got to recognize the four of us together.”

It was in 2007 that Vaswani broke the ice for the group and won a WSOP bracelet, in a Limit Shootout event.

Hendon Mob Riley

“I think it played to my strengths; I like the fact that you’re playing down to a winner. When you’re playing normal poker tournaments, there can only be one winner and it’s very rare that you are that winner.”

Vaswani excelled at changing his play and adapting to the different stages of each shootout table. The final irony was that he faced an Englishman heads up in Andy Ward. It didn’t take long for Vaswani to wipe Binion’s floor with him.

“Someone said it was the quickest heads-up match in the WSOP. I seemed to win most of the hands, and it went perfectly for me. It was long overdue, but I got the bracelet.”

Vaswani loved Vegas when he first visited, likening it to 'landing on another planet.' But after a while, the bright lights of Sin City were ones to be wary of.

'They’re like family and that was a great part of it. We were together all the time, funking for each other in a final.”

“It can drive you a bit crazy, all those machines ringing all the time, action 24 hours a day; you have to be very careful. When I started going to Vegas, I went with Joe once. We got there and I didn’t get to sleep for three days.”

The perils of entering tournaments and busting them can get any poker player down. But having their friends around to cushion the blow became the Mob’s greatest edge.

“It can be quite hard,” continues Vaswani. “Sometimes you get knocked out early and you’re spending time not playing poker. They’re like family and that was a great part of it. We were together all the time, funking for each other in a final.”

Moral Mob Support

Back then, it always seemed like there was one of the four in the latter stages of a major event. They’d be right there for each other. From moral support to strategic advice. In the most solo of environments, no Mobster was ever really alone at the poker table.

“We’d talk about the game and it was harder to learn back then,” says Ross Boatman. “There wasn’t so much information readily available. By the end, all you had to do was buy a DVD and you could learn everything we’d learned in years!”

Hendon Mob Database

The Mob, however, was way ahead of the curve. Barny was the highest-placed British player at the 2000 and 2001 WSOP Main Events, and the next year would be the only player to make three WSOP final tables, for which he was awarded tournament performance of the year. Soon, his old journalist skills were put to good use on the mic as he became a staple for the role of 'color commentator' over the next decade.

Both Boatman brothers were present at several final tables, from World Series events such as a PLO event in 2002 where they finished in seventh and ninth, with Ross coming out on top, to Marrakech in 2009, when it was Ross beating Dominik Nitsche heads up to come out on top, with Barny coming in fourth. The brotherly competition remained friendly, only providing more fuel for the Boatmans.

“It’s tough but once you arrive at a final table, you’re not a loser, you’ve already won. We enjoyed that we’d cut through a large field together, we both loved each other’s success.”

The brothers loved playing hard against each other, as did all the Mobsters from the very start back in the London home games. They might shoot each other a furtive glance if the other one won a pot, on the way to a potential clash, but in a hand, there were no friends.

Hendon Mob Jonathan Little

“You get down to the last two or three, there’s no avoiding each other and you’re both playing to win,' explained Ross. “It’s not that he’s my brother and I want to beat him; I wasn’t aware of any sibling rivalry. You just want to win. You want the glory, the trophy and, of course, the money.”

Barny agrees. He may have been Ross’ brother, and they were naturally very close, but all four men were as good as brothers. They’d been all over the world together, supported each other through thick and thin.

Www.hendonmob.com

“We didn’t talk hands that much, we’d joke about not wanting to hear poker stories, but we supported each other, lending each other money, or just by being there. We always swapped five percent as we wanted to have some sort of stake in each other, but not an amount that would make a difference to how we played.”

Barny Boatman came second in a $2,000 buy-in pot limit hold'em WSOP event back in 2002. In 2011, he reached the final table of the EPT San Remo Main Event. He came fourth, just missing out on the glory again.

But another event in 2011 would prove to rock their world more than anyone could have expected — Black Friday.

Black Friday Rocks the Mob's World

“We had 10,000 active players at Full Tilt and lost 98% of company revenue overnight,” Beevers recalled. “We went from having a serviced office of seven staff to just two. One guy had just come to work for us and now I was making him redundant.”

“We had 10,000 active players at Full Tilt and lost 98% of company revenue overnight.”

They paid that man’s lease for three months so that he didn’t have to leave his apartment. The Hendon Mob paid all of their staff for six months to wait and see what would happen. But in the end, workers losing their jobs was unavoidable.

The Hendon Mob had a decision to make, and it would be one that would shape their futures. Sell up or carry on? One thing was for sure — whatever they decided, there would be no going back.

Find out what happened next in the fourth and final part of The Unabridged Story of The Hendon Mob.

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