Barny Boatman
Barny Boatman at the 2005 World Series of Poker.
Nickname(s)	Barmy Barny
Residence	Archway, London
World Series of Poker
Bracelet(s)	None
Money finish(es)	23
Highest ITM Main Event finish	16th, 2000
World Poker Tour
Title(s)	None
Final table(s)	None
Money finish(es)	5
European Poker Tour
Title(s)	None
Final table(s)	1
Money finish(es)	5

Barny M. P. Boatman (born in St Pancras, London in 1964^[1]), is an English professional poker player and the oldest member of the poker-playing foursome known as The Hendon Mob. He is the older brother of Ross Boatman, and resides in Archway.^[2]

During his lengthy poker career, Boatman became one of the pioneers of poker on television by regularly appearing in the Late Night Poker television series. He was also the first person to reach 3 consecutive final tables at the World Series of Poker (WSOP),^[3] and came close to winning a WSOP bracelet.^[4]

Early years[link]

Boatman grew up to socialist parents in Somerstown, London.^[5] He left school at his earliest opportunity, following pressure from his ongoing truancy.^[6] He went on to travel for some time early in his life, and has both lived and worked in Barcelona, Australia, Hong Kong and Sri Lanka. He has worked as a bartender, builder, English teacher, journalist, computer programmer (for P&O) and as a legal advisor in Bermondsey, where he never lost a trial. He credits a near-death experience he had in a motorcycle accident, and the death of his younger sister Jo from cancer of giving him a sense of perspective in life.^{[7][8][9][10]} Boatman's hobbies include sky diving, snowboarding and scuba diving.^[11] He is the godfather to his brother Ross' son.^[12]

Boatman used to play poker at home with friends and later taught his brother Ross how to play. They began to attend poker tournaments together at the Vic on Edgware Road, where he won the first tournament he entered, a seven-card stud event paying around £2000. Together they went to a private poker game run by Joe Beevers and Ram Vaswani, with whom they became good friends. The four went on to be called The Hendon Mob. Together, they were invited by Nic Szeremeta to take part in the brand new Late Night Poker television series, where he reached the Grand Finals in series 3 and 4. During series 5 and 6, he commentated for the show, alongside Jesse May.^[7][13][14]

World Series of Poker[link]

Boatman first cashed in a World Series of Poker (WSOP) event in 2000 in the $3,000 no limit hold'em event. 4 days later he finished in the money in the $10,000 no limit hold'em main event, finishing in 16th place. (According to the James McManus book Positively Fifth Street, he was the chip leader for much of the tournament.) He also finished in the money of the main event in 2001 (33rd) and 2006 (854th).^{[15][16][17][18][19]}

Boatman narrowly missed out on a WSOP bracelet in the 2002 $2,000 pot limit hold'em event. His 2nd place finish earned him $77,160 after outlasting a field including Erik Seidel, Johnny Chan, Phil Gordon and John Juanda. This 2nd place finish was one of a record 3 back-to-back final tables, which earned him a win in the European Poker Awards Tournament Performance of the Year category. He also finished one place off a fourth consecutive final table.^[3][4]

Other Poker activities[link]

Boatman made the final table of the first Poker Million tournament. He also made the final table of the first ever Showdown Poker Tour event, finishing 2nd to Mats Gavatin.^[20][21][22]

His major titles include:

• L. 500,000 limit seven-card stud, 7th Torneo Di Poker, Slovenia, 1998^[23]
• FIM 1,000 pot limit Holdem/Omaha, Helsinki Freezeout, 1999^[24]
• £500 pot limit seven-card stud, European Poker Championships 2002^[25]
• $300 pot limit Omaha, Four Queens Poker Classic 2003^[26]
• €1,500 no limit hold'em, Helsinki Freezeout, 2003^[27]
• £500 no limit hold'em, Luton Christmas Cracker, 2003^[28]

In 2005 Boatman appeared on the chatshow Heads Up with Richard Herring to discuss his life, career and his love of poker. Since then, he has been known to use a small Barney Rubble statuette (given to him by Harry Demetriou) as a card protector.^[29]

In addition to Late Night Poker, he has commentated for Poker Million, World Heads-Up Poker Championship, Celebrity Poker Club, European Poker Tour, Poker Nations Cup and Victor Chandler Poker Cup. He also starred in his own series "Barny's Home Games" where he attended home poker games throughout Great Britain.^[10]

As of 2008 his total live tournament winnings exceed $1,200,000.^[30]

In addition, Boatman is a member of the Gutshot Card Club^[31] and is sponsored by Full Tilt Poker.^[10][32] He has written over 50 articles for The Hendon Mob's website, and two online poker lessons for Matthew Hilger's site Internettexasholdem.com.^[33][34][35]

Notes[link]

External links[link]

• Hendon Mob tournament results

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2010)

The Hendon Mob are a group of four professional poker players from London, England:

• Joe Beevers
• Barny Boatman
• Ross Boatman
• Ram Vaswani

The name of the group was first publicised by the Evening Standard newspaper in September 2000.

Joe Beevers is the only member of the group who actually comes from Hendon (a district of London) but the others played in Hendon. The Hendon Mob describe John Kabbaj as their unofficial fifth member. Several other European professionals, including Harry Demetriou (Koumari Boy), Padraig Parkinson (Padraig), Neil Channing (Bad Beat) and John Duthie have posted on the group's forum.

The Mob first became recognised for their appearances on the original televised poker programme Late Night Poker (1999–2002). The Hendon Mob also regularly attends the annual World Series of Poker, World Poker Tour and other major tournaments. They have dozens of in the money results between them.

Sponsorship[link]

In 2004 and 2005, the Mob was sponsored by Prima Poker to the tune of $2 million worth of worldwide tournament buyin fees. In exchange they played on the online Prima poker-room network. As part of the tour, the Mob challenged four-player teams of various nationalities to heads-up matches, culminating with the UK versus the U.S. in the inaugural Prima Transatlantic Cup in 2004. The Mob had won each of these international team matches until falling 3-1 to the US team of Phil Ivey, Andy Bloch, Chris Ferguson, and Paul Wolfe. The Mob's deal with Prima expired at the end of 2005.

The Mob were then sponsored by Full Tilt Poker up to September 2011 when the online poker site was accused of fraud.^[1]

Other ventures[link]

The Mob run a successful website that includes a tournament poker player database that attempts to house the results of every major worldwide poker tournament since 2000, indexed by location, date, and player. The origin of the information contained in the database was queried in a court action brought by rival website Pokerpages.com. Information sourced from Pokerpages.com has since been removed from the database.

The Mob were used in series one of the British con-art documentary series 'The Real Hustle'. Presenters Paul Wilson and Alexis Conran, posing as poker novices filming a documentary, beat the Mob by smuggling in decks stacked to their advantage.

Notes[link]

1. ^ Hendon Mob Ends Exclusive Relationship with Full Tilt Poker

External links[link]

• Official site
• Site Officiel Français
• PokerPages.com article
• CardPlayer.com interview

Joseph "Joe" Charles Beevers (born 9 December 1967 in Marylebone, London) is an English professional poker player and a member of The Hendon Mob.

During his lengthy poker career, Beevers became one of the pioneers of poker on television by appearing in every series of Late Night Poker, where he made a record 3 grand finals.^[1][2][3] Beevers also won the 2007 Poker Million and finished runner-up in two further televised poker events.^[4][5]

Early years[link]

Beevers' father taught him how to count cards in blackjack from age 10. His father also taught Beevers how to work out permutations and probabilities on a Sinclair ZX81 computer. Beevers left school at age 16, and became a part of a card-counting team with his father and two others at age 18. They often played at the Sergeant Yorkes Casino in Luton, where they found a croupier who often paid out 3-1 on blackjacks, and sometimes also paid out when a player's hand was bust. The team eventually stopped playing as their success led to Beevers being banned from 4 London casinos, and his father being banned from 19. Between them they were banned from 21 out of 23 London casinos. They also went to gamble on horse racing events about three times a week.^[6][7][8][9]

Beevers worked first for NatWest (as his father had done before him) then for Citibank in Hammersmith. He went on to attend Middlesex University as a mature student towards of the end of his 4 years playing regular blackjack, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts Honour's degree in Finance and Accounting at the age of 24.^[6][8]

Around this time, Beevers placed dog racing bets for future Hendon Mobster Ram Vaswani in Harrow, and they later met in Luton, starting an ongoing friendship.^[7]

Poker career[link]

Beevers began playing poker by entering a £10 pot limit stud rebuy poker tournament during a blackjack session in Luton. He went on to regularly play in a seven-card stud game in North London, where he estimates he won £35,000 to start his bankroll. By the time he finished university, he was earning well enough from playing poker and giving lessons to teachers and other students that he never returned to office work.^[9][10]

Prior to the emergence of televised poker, Beevers ran private poker games with Ram Vaswani. They played much pot limit Omaha there, which Beevers considers to be his preferred poker variant.^[11] It was in this game that they met Barny and Ross Boatman, the other two members of the Hendon Mob. Beevers began to travel to tournaments and won his first major event in Amsterdam in 1997. Upon winning, Beevers called his flatmate at 3am and sang Queen's "We Are the Champions" down the phone to him.^[6][12]

Beevers and the rest of The Hendon Mob were invited by Nic Szeremeta to appear in the brand new Late Night Poker television series, and supported the then-questionable idea of using a hole cam to make poker into a spectator sport.^[6] Beevers appeared in all 6 series of the show, and is tied with Dave Colclough for a record 10 appearances. Beevers made the Grand Final in seasons 1,^[1] 4^[2] and 5.^[3]

Beevers was the first member of The Hendon Mob to cash in a World Series of Poker (WSOP) event, placing 14th in the $2,500 pot limit Texas hold 'em event in the 1996 World Series of Poker.^[13]

Beevers also finished as the runner-up both to Jimmy White in the 2003 Poker Million and to Xuyen Pham in The Gaming Club World Poker Championship. He also finished on the TV bubble of the World Poker Tour (WPT) season 3 championship and finished in the money of the 2005 WSOP $10,000 no limit hold'em main event.^{[4][5][14][15][16]}

His major titles include:

• £2500 No Limit Hold'em, Great British Poker Tour - Grand Final 2007
• Hold'em 100, 2000^[17]
• £200 pot limit Omaha, British Open 2002^[18]
• €1,000 no limit hold'em, Irish Open 2003^[19]
• £300 pot limit hold'em, Poker Classics 2003^[20]
• $5,000 no limit hold'em, Four Queens Poker Classic 2004^[21]
• Poker Nations Cup 2006 ^[22] and 2008 ^[23]
• 2007 Poker Million

As of 2009, his total live tournament winnings exceed $2,400,000.^[24]

He is sponsored by Full Tilt Poker.^[25]

Beevers has written over 40 articles^[26] on The Hendon Mob's website, the introduction to the European edition of Michael Kaplan's book Aces and Kings (ISBN 1-84529-298-7)^[27] and two poker lessons for Matthew Hilger's website internettexasholdem.com.^[28][29]

Personal life[link]

Beevers' nickname "The Elegance" originates from the lifestyle he has been able to live through his poker winnings. He drives a Porsche 911 with the personalised number-plate Joe 911.^[8] In fact, Beevers is the only member of The Hendon Mob who kept his original nickname given by Victoria Coren in the first article on them, in the Evening Standard in September 2000.^[9] He is a season ticket holder at West Ham United F.C..^[30]

Beevers lives in Hendon with his wife Claire, whom he married at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, Nevada at the conclusion of the 2005 WSOP.^[6] He has twin daughters, born 21 February 2006 named Millie and Lola.^[31]

Notes[link]

External links[link]

• Joe Beevers Hendon Mob tournament results