It is a wet, grey afternoon in the middle of an industrial estate on the outskirts of Nottingham – the antithesis of glamour.
However annexed to one corner of this complex, neighboured by a long-forgotten nightclub, more than £1m is at stake in part of the biggest poker tournaments in the country.
This is Dusk Till Dawn, the biggest poker hall in Europe, and one of the crowning venues of the poker world.
It is eight years since it first opened and since then its reputation has flourished.
In 2010 broadcaster and poker champion Victoria Coren suggested Nottingham could become "the new poker mecca" and Dusk Till Dawn the best venue for playing the game in the country.
This year it held one of its biggest events – a three week festival where £3m in prize money was up for grabs across a number of tournaments.
The venue is the brainchild of 42-year-old Nottingham-born owner Rob Yong.
Mr Yong, who grew up in Bulwell but now lives in Strelley, began the business after spending years playing in poker tournaments across the world.
He said: "I went out with a friend to our local casino one evening, we were one minute late and weren't allowed to play. On our way back we just thought why not open our own?"
"We were on our way home and on the way we saw the sign on the building – for lease – in this industrial estate and we knew the place well and thought what about this place?
"We spent three or four years in the courts trying to start it. All the big casinos were upset – they didn't want us to be there."
In November the venue played host to the World Poker Tour 500, a competition where players paid £500 just to compete.
It is the first time the competition has been held outside of London.
Among the players at the festival was Nottingham boxing icon Carl Froch, World Poker Hall of Fame player Mike Sexton and TV player Devil Fish aka Dave Ulliott.
However compared to some of the other bids in the festival the £500 was a modest amount.
The World Poker Tour main event – held at the end of November – required a £3,000 bid to play and attracted players from across the world.
Hotels across the city were booked out during the competition bringing with it a swell of tourist revenue – estimates for amount made in hotel stays climbed into the tens of thousands pounds.
In three weeks around 6,000 people took part.
Stepping in on one of the last day's competition the hall is packed with people but the exorbitance of its label, "festival", hardly matches the atmosphere in the sprawling poker hall.
The sound of chips clicking between fingers echoes everywhere you go– dozens of players across 80 tables are sat in thought guessing the motivation of their opponents.
Screens flashing the bulging pot and a hall of barely-dressed waitresses ferrying drinks between tables evokes the imagery of a casino but the mood is all the more different. It is quiet, soulful even meditative.
However this is still by any other name gambling and winnings aside, its' a room packed with people playing games on a Friday afternoon while the rest of the world counts down the last aching hours to the weekend.
Dusk Till Dawn venue director and former professional poker player Simon Trumper insists that the nature of poker and the way in which their business operates is unique.
He said: "It's a different atmosphere in here; these are all poker players in one place.
"There's an element of luck, but it's a sociable game and in any given night with little skill and a bit of luck you can win thousands here, it attracts everybody.
"We have a duty of care as well for our customer, if someone has had too much to drink we tell them that they shouldn't be playing.
"As part of our gaming licence if we thought someone was losing more than they could afford we would stop them."
Someone who can play testament to the heights and pitfalls of this game is Notts born multimillionaire poker player Sam Trickett.
His biggest win was a staggering $10m in the World Series of Poker One Drop event in Las Vegas in 2012 but has also lost hundreds of thousands of pounds in tournaments as well.
He now has a room named after him at Dusk Till Dawn and was at the club's festival.
He arrived at the hall in a state-of-the-art Ferrari but despite his wealth he blends inconspicuously with the crowd in jeans and hoodie.
Despite his winnings, he still lives in Mansfield and is not tempted towards a life of glamour. He said: "I just like the quiet life, the belonging, the normal life and seeing my class friends and seeing my family regularly."
While he was clear that he still understood the game as a gambling sport, he said it is one where the intellectual skill is acute.
He said: "You've always got to get yourself in a position where you can get lucky, luckier than the other person.
"You're making high pressure decisions dealing with imperfect information, you've got to have a clear head and to keep your cool.
"There's a lot of maths, a lot of statistics, a lot of game theory and a lot of strategy.
"You never stop learning, there's so many different ways to play with every hand."
Among the game's rising stars is Alex Goulder, 25, who came to study in Nottingham but left university to pursue the game-full time, remaining in Nottingham to play.
He now lives in Barcelona and travels across the world in competitions
He said: "I had quite a big win early on as I fell out of love with university – I started to take poker really seriously.
"Within the first six months of training properly I had made £77,000.
"I find the competition has got harder with more and more people playing than before.
"I've spent five years travelling the world getting up when I want to, playing where I want, holidays when I want, there's just so much freedom to try new things.
"It's an amazing life and I still love playing poker. I don't want to do anything else."
With even bigger tournaments coming in the New Year, the game continues to bring a huge, new and growing audience of people to Nottingham.
For Dusk Till Dawn owner Rob Yong, it's a privilege to have put another feather in the city's cap.
He said: "It feels good, I've always stayed in Nottingham, had a lot of business in Nottingham, I still holiday with my friends from school.
"It always feels great to be able to do something like this in your hometown."
Walking away from the hall, it's strange to think how this isolated warehouse, hidden off the outskirts of the city, contains some of the sharpest, dedicated, maybe even obsessive people duking it out for a stake at glory.
There are those who have shown that with the right smarts and ambition a player can go far.
Pitfalls exist too and some gamblers spin out of control and lose everything, hurting themselves and those around them in the process.
It makes you wonder if poker can continue to be a success and grow beyond its audience of die-hard fans.
Judging by what Nottingham has to show, it may be on the cards.
![Is Nottingham becoming a world capital for poker?]( "Is Nottingham becoming a world capital for poker?")
