I attended an exclusive Bond-inspired night of gambling at Old Course

The Global Investment Group work hard and play harder


Secrecy, intrigue, and a certain mystique were the alluring insinuations of the invitation to ‘For Your Eyes Only’, an exclusive night of gambling, drinks and music held by the Global Investment Group.

A first for the Global Investment Group, it might have drawn its inspiration from the iconic ‘Blackout’, GIG’s annual cavalcade into Dundee. More precisely – the regular pilgrimage by plastered partygoers from ‘Liquid’, the champagne-and-shot-flooded nightclub rented out for the event, to the casino next door.

Always refreshing is a different venue, given St Andrews’ chronic shortage of original choices, so a pleasant surprise here. Quite outside the average St Andrean’s comfort zone in terms of distance (a full five minutes walk!), it was amusing to see a trail of taxis pottering through the gloomy mist to the Old Course Hotel. A red carpet led through to the foyer of what was known as the ‘Hall of Champions’, where one was offered a choice of drink, and a blue chip worth £5 for gambling or another drink.

Naturally, as a serious investor having carefully analysed my odds, the author hedged his bets on the tangible, going straight to the bar for some liquid assets.

Having reaped the dividends, attention was directed to the next room. A narrow door opened up to a vast room with roulette and blackjack tables, with gamblers tightly gripping their glasses of pleasant poison. These were surrounded by onlookers, swarming like (black-tie-attired) flies, waiting with bated breath for the fall of the dice, the telling halt of the roulette ball.

As millions (exaggerating a touch) in chips moved back and forth, tensions bubbled, beads of sweat were formed, then swiftly deflated in gasps of delight or short grunts of disappointment – plastic fortunes either quickly melted, or were made – all to the rhythm of the disc jockeys.

An odd dichotomy developed – on the one hand, an ecstatic, drunken crowd wearing lopsided grins, visibly on the boozy side and in good spirits. This presumably consisted of successful gamblers who had made their fortunes and had now wisely invested them in said ‘liquid assets’.

Some seemed to have rolled out particularly well with the dice, with a bouncer reporting that one particularly plastered cardsharp had booted himself out of the event, and was doing pushups in the bushes outside. Conversely were the presumed losers, lacking the vocation for the dance floor, morosely huddled in small groups and notably more sober.

Catering to the adrenaline junkies, those gambling aficionados and ‘crapshooters’ who derive physical pleasure from playing with and risking their (virtual or real) moolah, ‘For Your Eyes Only’ is another successful creation by GIG – already well-known for their notorious socials tenuously linked to ‘investment’ – this link perhaps being interpreted as a showcase of the lifestyle of the successful investor – a reappropriation of the ‘work hard, play hard’ paradigm, editing out the ‘work hard’ bit in typical St Andrews fashion.

However, the nature of the game as such is that for there to be winners, there must be losers, leading to the disparity in moods – the high rolling hedonists (the gambler-in-chief winning a Veuve Clicquot magnum), and those with the betting blues.

All photos courtesy of Lightbox Creative.