Birmingham's Broadway Casino is located just off one of England's second city's main roundabouts, in a contained, clean and well kept leisure area, Broadway Plaza, which also houses a multiplex cinema, restaurants, bars and a hotel. It's not central to a large housing area, but in such a large city, the owners and management have targeted their clientele with huge success. They've focussed a large part of their efforts on making Broadway Casino one of the Midlands' most successful poker casinos, and it works.

Inside, Broadway Casino looks like many modern casinos; a simple, clean layout, restaurant toward the rear, horseshoe bar with a relaxed seating area. All the usual table games are present, and this particular Saturday night, they are very well attended. Walking in, you get the impression that every Saturday night here is this vibrant. The customers know what they're doing, and it's a great mix of clientele, exactly the way a good casino should be.

The attention is drawn this Saturday night to the poker room (though it's not actually an enclosed room, it's a slightly raised area from the main floor). It's full, and it's buzzing as Broadway Casino is hosting a charity event in association with worldofpoker.com, to raise money for a local hospice, Acorns.

Malcolm Harwood, aka The Rock (his Late Night Poker nickname), is helping host the tournament, as he works for worldofpoker.com and lives locally. He explained that, when it came down to selecting a venue for this charity event, there was only one choice for him: "When it came to organising this event, this was the only place I really considered. This casino is a great night out; no trouble, nice people, great food. It's a lovely place. The staff here are outstanding, too. The card room staff are great, they enjoy what they're doing and the management back them up.

"These people here tonight, they've raised £1500 for charity and they're going to chip in another £500 before the night's out. That's brilliant."

For the casino, it's not that simple to organise an effective event but the Broadway Casino staff seem to take it completely in their stride. In Raj Raju, they have a calm, collected young Card Room Manager, and he has the able support of General Manager Charles Griffin.

Raj explained how the charity benefits from the players: "Officially it's a £50 buy-in, but actually it's a £40 freeze-out with a £10 charitable donation. The £10 donation they make of their own will, they could play for £40 if they wanted, but no-one has. It would be against the spirit of the night."

And, just before Christmas, a night like this is all about spirit. Broadway Casino, with a reputation as the place to come and play cards in Birmingham, has something to live up to, but in the not-too-distant future, bigger and better tournaments are going to be happening here. As Charles explained, the casino has 12 poker tables at the moment, and on a Friday or Saturday all 12 run, with 10 people to a table, but it depends on the night of the week. "It's all changing; early in the new year we're looking at a plan for the card room where we're looking to site another 25 tables to increase the numbers by 250 people. We're expanding upstairs, it's empty space up there so we can move right in."

Reasonably close to Broadway Casino is a Grosvenor casino, right on busy Broad Street. With two casinos so close, the local market must be vibrant, though the two venues apparently offer quite different things. The Grosvenor doesn't have a poker room, so Broadway picks up all the poker clients in the area, and as Charles explained, he wants his casino to offer something different within: "We try to offer something a bit different, a little bit extra, something special, with our restaurant, the food we serve, the service to the customers – the personal touch that some other operators might not offer."

Broadway Casino is clearly riding the poker boom and managing it well, with enough satellite tournaments and local tournaments, plus regular evening play, to keep a healthy number of players both happy and consistently coming back for more. Charles added: "At the moment the whole poker industry is booming, that's where the growth is in the casino industry at the moment. It's well worth supporting.

"We opened with 10 poker tables and have added another two, which takes us to our maximum at the moment. We can't site any more at the moment, but as I said, we're looking at that now.

"When we were looking at opening, we looked at the area, saw that there was nowhere for the serious poker player to go and filled that need. There's always a demand for poker and there always will be: we've just supplied the venue, and people come to play."

So how does a casino with a thriving local market entice in new players? As Charles says, "Poker's a large draw for this casino. I wouldn't say it's the main draw, as we have an excellent restaurant as well, but it's certainly a big draw." One of the Broadway's strengths is undoubtedly the a la carte restaurant, Oscar’s, which is both excellent and affordable. Then there's the casino staff, who are frankly outstanding at all levels, which is a must if a casino is to earn repeat business.

Charles knows how most new players find out about the casino and also ensures new players are not intimidated by the live game. "A lot of our new players come in thanks to word of mouth, and this being a popular room, a well-run, efficient card room with Raj in charge. People want to use this venue; we're always getting people approaching us with requests and ways to work together. When we expand upstairs, our marketing strategy will be full-on.

"One of the best things we do is use Thursday nights for either corporate events or training. We ask new players to come along on a Thursday night for a training session, so they learn how to play live poker and when it comes to a tournament or a normal playing night, they won't be intimidated by the atmosphere."

Pushing an event to a local market may be simpler than, say, a national event, but it's still not easy. But manager Charles recognises that the charity event has benefited from the association with worldofpoker.com. He said: "Tonight was a relatively easy one for us to push, partly because of the association with worldofpoker.com, who advertised on their web site. In-house, we had flyers on the tables and it was fully booked in a matter of weeks. Our marketing for this one was minimal, but for other events it's different.

"With the poker festival which we're holding in February, we've advertised with Poker Europa, one of the main poker magazines which everybody reads, and we've mailshotted all of our poker members, which is over 3,500 people. After the festivities tonight, all the posters in-house and all the flyers will be targetted toward the poker festival, and we're advertising on our own website www.broadwaycasino.co.uk."

The Broadway has clearly identified its core customers and does everything right in keeping their return business; with the expansion of their poker facilities, don't be too surprised if this casino's card room becomes one of Europe's most enjoyed – and enjoyable – poker rooms.

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