They are suave, exciting and here to make money. Bob Hart catches up with poker's hot young things.

Lock up your wives, daughters and any spare cash you may have in the house: The Hendon Mob are in town.

These four, highly polished young Brits flew into Melbourne early yesterday. And they are quietly confident of leaving, in a week or two, with rather more money than they brought with them.

The Hendon Mob - good mates, gambling cohorts and among Britain's top professional poker players - generate heat, light and excitement wherever they go: Melbourne will be no exception. They are here to contest the fifth Australasian Poker Championships, which started yesterday. And in the course of the tournament, they fully expect to take our money, possibly our sweethearts, but certainly no prisoners.

This year, Esquire magazine thought enough of the colourful quartet to devote seven pages of the July edition to the Mob's antics at Britain's gigantic Poker Million tournament on the Isle of Mann. It made interesting reading…..

The Hendon Mob are Ross 'The Glamour' Boatman, Barny 'The Humour' Boatman (Ross's brother). Ram 'The Looks' Vaswani and Joe 'The Elegance' Beevers. They gave each other their nicknames. And each is a fairly accurate description of the Mobster in question.

Ross Boatman, for example, is clearly 'The Glamour': he is a fairly successful British film and television actor who turned down a big role in the film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. "As an actor," he told Esquire, "you just sit at home and wait for the phone to ring. But with poker, I can go out and make it happen." He does.
Barny Boatman is 'The Humour' because, naturally, he is the joker in the pack - but no less dangerous at the card table for that.
While supercool Ram Vaswani, 'The Looks', was a professional snooker player before he turned to poker. For nine years Ram's had a girlfriend who was secretary of the European Poker Players Association. Once, she asked Ram to write her a love poem. "On the moors there's heather and bramble," he wrote, "But all I want to do is gamble." They are no longer together.
And Joe Beevers? Joe is every inch 'The Elegance': he lives well, drinks champagne, and drives a Porsche 911 with the number plate JOE 911. Naturally.

Nicknames are a noble poker tradition: players from whom The Hendon Mob can expect serious competition, for example, include local heroes Billy 'The Croc' Agyros, widely regarded as Australia's best. Martin 'The Doc' Comer, a high-flyer from Sydney, and Milo 'The Whacker' Nadalin, a sensibly-proportioned Gold Coast assassin who wears a large, black hat.

Less flamboyantly branded, but no less dangerous at the table, are members of an Irish contingent headed by gentlemanly former European Open Champion Liam Flood. British ace Nic Szeremeta and French champ Jacques Arama are also playing.
The US, long regarded as the centre of world poker, will be represented by globetrotting poker maestro Kirk Morrison - a polished young player with more than 100 tournament wins and more than $1.96 million in prize money to his credit. He is, in the view of many experts, the player to watch here.

The tournament will continue through next week - ending dramatically on January 13 with the final stages of the $300,000 No Limit Hold'em tournament, from which the winner will emerge with a cool $150,000.

Spectators, all of whom need to know a thing or two about the game to derive any real enjoyment, are welcome: tiered seating will be installed in Crown's poker room for the final day. Well behaved kibitzers - poker spectators - are welcome to roll along any day, however, and quietly inhale the high stakes action.

But if you should attend, and if the English chap who happens to be sitting besides you wants to lay you generous odds against an apparently improbable eventuality, such as a mouse climbing out of his top pocket and playing Rule Britannia on a trombone, do not take the bet: should you do so, you will find yourself to be poorer, and singing along to a performing mouse. Just remember there is no easy money to be won at a poker tournament.

In the course of the next week, some 150 players - 80 locals and 70 imports including 25 international players - will battle for a share of $700,000 in prize money. All of which will be parted with reluctantly.

"But the side action will, as usual, be even bigger than the main games," says Crown's tournaments manager Keith 'Bendigo' Sloan, another poker ace, and the man largely responsible for building Crown into a world poker destination. "You name it. Millions will change hands. You will be able to win or lose $50,000 with a bit of side action, no problem."

All of which will, of course, interest The Hendon Mob who, like all professionals, do not limit their involvement to the tournaments alone. When they go to a poker tournament they call it "going to work". "Most people play poker like they play golf," says Joe. "But we take it seriously and we study it, and while they're having a good time we're collecting our wages."

Joe learnt to play professional blackjack from his father, tried to settle into a job at Citibank, but gave up and has been earning his living at poker table for 10 years because, as he happily explains, "with poker, you can do what you want when you want."

Poker, however, is not a team game - members of The Hendon Mob show each other no mercy when they share a table. "But we trust each other, travel together, and help each other out when we're in trouble," explains Barny Boatman.
To make that official, they have 5 per cent of each other's action. In other words, of any money any team member wins, he gives each of the other three members 5 per cent: if one of then wins $1 million, the other three get $50,000. Just like that.
"If one of us has a result, we all have a result," Ram Vaswani says. "That's the good thing about being part of a team: there's always someone in the final to cheer on."

With the huge growth of poker worldwide and an increasing TV and Internet audience for the game, the Hendon Mob now has a sports agent working for them: there are TV and sponsorship deals "in the works", they say. "The Hendon Mob has got a lot of class and a lot of talent," Barny says, talking up his hand in finest poker style.

And by the time they leave town - unless we concentrate hard, know when to hold'em, when to fold'em, and do not bet against musical mice - they will also have an unreasonable amount of our money.