The Gutshot Poker Club (also known as The Gutshot Poker Collective or simply The Gutshot) was a poker club, bar, restaurant and internet cafe located on Clerkenwell Road, London, England. The club opened in March 2004 and closed in 2007. It was founded by Barry Martin and Derek Kelly.
The club ran poker ring games, and tournaments one to three times per day, and hosted four festivals of poker per annum.
Amongst the successes achieved by members of the club are:
In addition to many English poker players, former WSOP main event champions Phil Hellmuth Jr, Chris Ferguson, Chris Moneymaker, Greg Raymer and Joe Hachem also played at the venue, as well as others such as Scott Fischman, Howard Lederer, Marcel Lüske and Andy Bloch.
In May 2006, the Gutshot held the first ever event of the Showdown Poker Tour, a £3,448 buy-in event won by EPT winner Mats Gavatin.
On 16 January 2007, the owner of the club was convicted of contravening the Gaming Act. The jury in the case rejected Derek Kelly's contention that poker was a game of skill, and thus exempt from the Gaming Act. Derek Kelly appealed this verdict at the Royal Court of Appeal in London but failed, after which the club closed.[1]
The club also had its own online poker software, which survived the closure of the club. Gutshot Poker began on the Microgaming network but was transferred to the Cake Poker Network in 2008, and later to iPoker network. It is now part of the Merge Network. The main site also includes a popular forum in addition to news, features, strategy articles and blogs.