Melbourne • Hardware Lane • Level Two
Lamplight Rooms is a social games lounge above the laneway: cards, dice, a wheel and a long shelf of board games, all played for the fun of playing. The counters are counters. They buy nothing, they convert to nothing, and nobody leaves with winnings.
The short version
Come up one flight of stairs from Hardware Lane and the street noise drops away. There are three connected rooms up here: a long front room with six felt tables, a quieter middle room of armchairs and low lamps, and a private room at the back with a door that shuts. A short bar sits between them, and a stage barely bigger than a hearth rug takes up one corner.
What we run is social table play. A dealer teaches you a hand, you sit down with a rack of counters, and you play until you have had enough. Nothing is wagered. The counters are wooden and clay and slightly worn at the edges, and they are worth exactly as much at the end of the night as they were at the start, which is nothing at all. You pay for your seat and for whatever you eat and drink, and that is the whole of the arithmetic.
The rest of the week fills in around the tables. There is a quiz that takes itself only moderately seriously, a night of live music where the band sets up two metres from the nearest armchair, a board and party game night where the shelf gets emptied onto the floor, and a slow Sunday for chess, backgammon and crib. Everyone upstairs is over eighteen and shows photo ID at the door, members and guests alike.
What we do
Every one of them is played for entertainment only. No stake is placed, no pot is collected and nothing is paid out, on any night, at any table, for any guest.
Six felt tables run under the lamps in the front room. A host deals, explains the hand as it goes and will happily restart a round for anyone who is still learning. You take a rack of counters at the seat and hand it back when you stand up.
from $18 a seatSix rounds, teams of up to five, read out by whoever is on the microphone that week. The prizes are a round of toast from the kitchen, a jar of the good olives and the right to pick the music for the last half hour.
$14 a ticketA three- or four-piece plays on the corner stage with no risers and no barrier, so the front row is whoever got the armchair. Tables stay open at the far end of the room for anyone who would rather keep playing through the set.
$22 a ticketA long wall of board, tile and party games, from fifteen-minute card fillers to the sort of thing that needs a cleared table and a patient explanation. Hosts will teach any of them, and will tell you honestly which ones take three hours.
$15 a seatA private games room for eight to fourteen people with its own door, its own lamps and its own table. Birthdays, farewells, a work night that nobody wants to call a work night. A host stays with you for the whole evening.
from $190 an eveningThe first hour of every night is a teaching hour at two of the tables. No seat fee if it is your first time in the room: a host walks you through a hand, the counters, the etiquette and what to do when you want to leave the table.
no charge, first visitThree plain facts
No money, no goods and no favours are wagered on any game in this building. Counters are scorekeeping tools. They cannot be bought beyond the seat fee, they cannot be sold, they cannot be exchanged between guests and they are worth nothing when you hand them back. If you are looking for a place to gamble, this is not one, and we will say so at the door.
We suggest two hours at a table and the hosts will mention it when you get there. The front room closes at midnight from Tuesday to Thursday and at one in the morning on Friday and Saturday, and the lamps go off whether or not the hand is finished. Nobody is talked into one more round, and staff will ask anyone who seems to be chasing something to step away and take a break.
Everyone shows photo identification on the landing, every visit, members included. There is no guest list that gets you past that. The rooms are licensed for food and drink and the bar keeps the same hours as the tables, so under-eighteens cannot come up even in company and even early in the evening.
A look around
Six frames from an ordinary week upstairs. No staged crowds, no props we do not own.
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How a visit goes
Nothing here is complicated, but it helps to know the shape of it, especially if you have never sat at a dealt table before.
Members hold seats through the desk and guests can book the same way, by phone or through the form on this site. If there is room we will take you on the night, though the quiz and the music nights do fill, and the back room is always booked ahead.
The stairs come up to a small foyer with a cloakroom and a host at a lectern. You show ID, we take your coat if you want us to, and we mark your seat fee or your ticket. Bags larger than a tote go in the cloakroom rather than under the tables.
At the table you are handed a rack. Count it if you like; it makes no difference to anything. The host tells you the game, the order of play and the one or two house conventions that differ from whatever you learned at home, then deals the first hand slowly.
You are not held to one table. People move between the felt, the board shelf, the bar and the terrace all night, and the kitchen will bring food to wherever you have landed. If a set is starting on the corner stage the hosts will say so, and the tables pause while people shuffle their chairs around.
When you are done you give the rack to the host and that is the end of it. There is no tally, no cash-out window and no ledger of who finished ahead. Settle whatever is open at the bar, collect your coat in the foyer and go down the stairs into the laneway.
The middle room
Not everyone wants to be at a table all night, and a games lounge that only has tables turns into a hard place to be after the second hour. So the middle room is deliberately quiet: six armchairs, two low couches, a pair of reading lamps and a small shelf of the two-player games that work when you are tired. The music is turned down in here and the hosts do not come through offering anything.
It is also where we send anyone who needs a breather. If a host suggests you step away from the felt for twenty minutes, this is where they mean, and the tea is free. It is a small thing, but a room with somewhere to stop in it behaves differently from a room without one, and we would rather people left at the hour they meant to leave.
What it costs
Three membership tiers, all of them month to month, all of them cancellable with a fortnight's notice. You do not need a membership to come up: guests pay a seat fee or a ticket on the night.
For the once-a-fortnight visitor who wants a seat held without thinking about it.
Most taken
For the regular who is in twice a week and usually brings someone along.
For people who use the back room and treat the place as their front parlour.
Food and drink are charged separately at the bar and are never included unless a back room package says so in writing. Nothing on this page is a stake, an entry fee to a pool, or a purchase of counters: it buys a seat, a ticket or a room, and no payment of any kind can be won back or paid out.
Asked at the door
You arrive any time after six, show ID on the landing and tell the host what you feel like playing. They seat you at a felt table and hand you a rack of counters, then deal and explain as they go, pausing for anyone who is new. You can stay at that table, move to another, or take the rack back to the host and go and sit in the middle room instead.
Yes, and most nights the room is half guests. Every tier includes guests at the member seat rate, from one on Lamplighter up to three on Table Holder, and extra guests simply pay the standard seat fee. Every guest shows photo identification at the door, no matter who they came up the stairs with.
Ring the desk or send the form with your date, your numbers and roughly what you want the evening to be. We hold the back room on a deposit of a quarter of the hire, confirm the host and the games with you about a week ahead, and the balance is settled on the night with whatever you have run up at the bar. Fourteen people is the comfortable maximum.
They are counters: clay and timber discs that keep score at the table and nothing more. You cannot buy them, you cannot sell them, you cannot carry them out of the building and they convert to no money, credit, goods or favours at any point. A rack of counters is handed to you at the seat and handed back when you leave the table.
There is a small kitchen doing things you can eat with one hand while holding cards: toasted sandwiches, a cheese and pickle plate, olives, a bowl of soup in winter and chips with vinegar late at night. The bar runs beer, wine, cocktails and a decent list of things with no alcohol in them. All of it is charged separately from your seat fee.
There is a lift from the laneway entrance to Level 2 and all three rooms are on one flat floor, with an accessible toilet off the foyer. The terrace is reached by three steps, so tell us when you book and we will keep a table inside with the same view. Two felt tables are height-adjustable and we keep large-print card decks and tactile counters behind the bar.
The front room closes at midnight from Tuesday to Thursday and at one in the morning on Friday and Saturday, and the Sunday sitting finishes at nine in the evening. Last food orders go in an hour before close and the hosts start collecting racks half an hour before. Monday the room is dark unless it has been hired.
A seat or a ticket can be cancelled up to the afternoon of the night with nothing owing, and we will move it to another night if you would rather. Back room deposits are refundable up to a week before the evening, and inside that week we will shift the booking to another date rather than keep the money. Ring the desk and talk to us if something has gone wrong.
Contact
Book a seat, ask about the back room, or come up on a Tuesday teaching hour and find out whether a room like this suits you. Bring photo ID, bring whoever you like over eighteen, and leave your wallet for the bar.