The Ritz Club

The Ritz Club occupies rooms below the Ritz Hotel on Piccadilly, one of London's most storied hotel addresses, and opened as a licensed casino in 1978 inside a suite of rooms decorated in the same Louis XVI revival style as the hotel above — ornate plasterwork, gilt mirrors, and soft, formal lighting closer to a private drawing room than a commercial gaming floor.

Unlike the large multi-level casinos elsewhere in central London, the Ritz Club is deliberately compact and operates as a private members' club, a structure common among London's older, higher-end gaming houses. The gaming programme reflects that: French and English Roulette, Blackjack, and Punto Banco dominate, aimed at a table-games clientele rather than a large slot-machine hall, and the room is run at a noticeably quieter, more formal pace than the West End's bigger casinos.

Its setting inside a five-star hotel also shapes the visit: the club connects to the Ritz's own restaurants and bars, and many evenings begin with dinner upstairs before moving down to the tables, in keeping with a tradition of hotel-based gaming clubs that has largely disappeared from most other European capitals.

Because it operates on a private-members basis, casual walk-in visitors should expect a more involved entry process than at a large public casino — arranging membership or a member's introduction in advance is the norm, and the formality extends to dress, conduct, and the generally hushed tone of the gaming rooms themselves.