Rileys Victoria

There’s two distinct places here. Upstairs is a pool bar (I believe it has dartboards now too) that has some rather odd sized pool tables; somewhere between an English and American. I don’t go to this bit so my review is of the downstairs.
Downstairs is for members of Rileys only but it has about 9 American Pool tables, 2 English and a room at the back with 4 (I think, could be 6) snooker tables.
The staff are generally ok if a little grumpy and slow to realise you are standing at the bar waiting for a drink while your pool time is ebbing away. The food is big standard.
Ever since they refurbished the carpets the place no longer smells like piss — which is a bonus.

What a lovely venue this is. There is a huge supply of snooker and pool tables for you to shake your cue at. The bar is spacious and relatively pleasing to the eye, and on a quiet Monday night my party of eleven felt rather exclusive. Unlike many pool halls Rileys Victoria, does not feel dark, grimy or tacky. What was most pleasing was the complete omission of Chav types. YIPPEEEEEE!
The bar was inexpensive and had an offering of 3−4 – 2’s on cider. Mmmm… Pears! You could also double your single shot of spirits on selected lines for an extra £1.
For an incredible £3 per person, Peter the manager took my party through the rigours of Texas Hold ‘Em Poker. We played hand after hand for many hours, and Peter remained funny, witty and patient throughout. My hat off to you for that sir.
There is word that brand new poker tournaments with a £10 pay-​in will be starting soon. With up to 25pp playing, the last man standing will walk away with £250. I have been assured the atmosphere will be fun.
Rileys in Victoria is a great spot for a party night of pool, poker or drinking.

The main spoiler here for me, was the fact that it felt like it could have been a bit more spacious, and in a better area. I feel a bit for them — if you didn’t know the place was here, you would probably never find it. The area it’s in seemed close to empty, with nothing inspiring around them.
Thankfully, however, that’s a double edged sword. It meant that the place wasn’t crowded, and free of any undesirables whilst we were there.
As Leon mentioned already, they were doing a BOGOF on the pear kopparberg, which in true Unilocaler style, went down a hoot. They were pricier than many places I’ve been, on a one-​for-​one basis, but as soon as you have a group willing to all go for them, their value rocketted.
The manager was very nice with us, going through it all and engaging us all in one way or another. Whilst I felt he could have been a little more confident on the rules, and explained at the beginning that it was using some slightly unconventional rules to keep the game moving faster (not resetting the minimum bid each round of bets) rather than after a couple of hours of people randomly disagreeing with it, then it would have been perfect.
In addition to our poker table, they also had a lot of pool and, seemingly (though I didn’t check it out) snooker tables, too. All it needs is indoor smoking, and I could truly call this place my own.
There was discussion of maybe, when we have enough people, doing an all out hiring of the downstairs, and just having a few hours of people doing whatever they wanted — swapping between talking, playing their choons on the jukebox (and groovin’ out accordingly), poker playing and pool/​snooker playing. I find this incentive enough on its own to do whatever we can to find more people, because I think it’s a lovely reason to come back.
Last but not least, we saw some interest in Unilocalers on the poker tournament Leon C mentioned here. Cheap buy in for what is promised to us to be a relaxed and fun game of poker, running once or twice per week or two. Perhaps this could almost be a regular event, for some of us. Definitely has my vote.

We had a couple of staff nights out in this bar and it was so much fun. I love to play pool but it was excellent that so many people were willing to give it a go. If you go with a friend it is far too expensive at £1.50 per game, but we hired out four tables for three hours and had a nice buffet arranged as well.
It is only ashame that my team let me down and we los the match by two games.
Now it is coming up to christmas, if anyone is looking for ideas of staff parties, it is definitely worth considering even as a way to start off the night with a few drinks!!!