We take a look back at one of London's most famous casinos
When William Crockford established his casino at 50 St James Place in the ever-fashionable London clubland he probably had no idea his enterprise would still be running, in some form, almost two hundred years later. From its Regency beginnings to Genting's Malaysian-owned Curzon Street incarnation, the Crockfords name traced an almost unbroken line through British gambling, before the doors finally closed in October 2023.
It did not stand on its original site at the end. It had moved a stone's throw across Piccadilly to 30 Curzon Street in the heart of Mayfair, where it spent its final Genting decades attracting the kind of clientele Crockford himself had liked to entertain, albeit minus most of the aristocratic element.
There are, however, some crucial operational differences. Back in the day, Crockford liked to cheat his customers.
For a man coming from a relatively humble background he was an unlikely character to be laying on games for the landed gentry in Regency London, but the son of a fishmonger made good had a huge asset in that he was an expert gambler.
He had spent years honing his craft in the gambling dens of London and was extraordinarily good at probability, able to work out the odds on any given hand or spin of a wheel with remarkable accuracy. He was also, it has to be said, something of a rogue.
His first venture was a gaming house in Westminster, which he ran with a partner named Taylor. The pair of them made a considerable amount of money, though the methods they used to win were not always strictly above board.
The club at 50 St James was a different proposition entirely, however. This was a first-class establishment in every sense of the word, with the finest cuisine in London, the best wine cellar in the city and a gaming floor that put every other establishment in the capital to shame.
Crockford employed some of the best chefs in Europe, including the legendary Ude who had previously worked for Napoleon, and the menu was said to be the finest in London. The wine list was equally impressive, and members were offered every conceivable luxury.
But behind all this luxury lay the iron determination of a man who knew exactly what he was doing. The games were rigged in the house's favour, the cards were marked, and the croupiers were all in on it. Crockford was running a very successful con, and the aristocracy of Regency London were falling for it hook, line and sinker.
By the time he retired in 1840, Crockford had amassed a fortune of over £1.2 million - an extraordinary sum in those days. He bought a mansion on Carlton House Terrace and spent his final years as a country gentleman, far removed from the gaming tables that had made him rich.
The club closed on his death in 1844 and the building was sold to the Army and Navy Club. It was not until 1928 that the Crockfords name was revived, this time as a bridge club on the same Curzon Street address it occupies today.
From bridge the club expanded into casino games, adding Chemin de Fer, Roulette and Blackjack, and gradually built up the reputation for exclusivity and high stakes play that it enjoys to this day.
In 1971 the club was acquired by Genting, the Malaysian gaming giant that built out a string of premium UK casinos over the decades that followed. Under Genting's ownership Crockfords was extensively refurbished and, for most of the period, offered a gaming experience that was second to none in London.
The decor was understated and elegant, the staff impeccably trained and the games conducted with the kind of quiet efficiency you'd expect from one of the world's leading casino operators. There was Roulette, Blackjack, Baccarat and Three Card Poker, with electronic Roulette terminals for those who preferred a faster pace.
In 2012 the poker player Phil Ivey took the casino for £7.3 million at Punto Banco using a technique called edge sorting. Genting withheld the winnings and the case ran all the way to the UK Supreme Court (Ivey v Genting Casinos UK [2017] UKSC 67), where the court reshaped the legal definition of casino cheating in the operator's favour. It was, in retrospect, the last great Crockfords story.
In autumn 2023 Genting UK quietly wound the club down at 30 Curzon Street. The lease has not been refilled at the time of writing and the Crockfords brand sits dormant. The closest current equivalent on the same street is Wynn Mayfair at numbers 27 to 28, the former Crown Aspinall's room rebadged after Wynn Resorts' early-2025 acquisition.
