Bryan Berg Knocks Down The Houses Of Parliament @ Aspers Casino!

Last night I was over at the new Aspers Casino in London’s newest shopping centre, Westfield Stratford City, to see Guinness World Record Holder Bryan Berg (@cardstacker) knock down the playing card building that Sky Poker had sponsored him to create over the previous couple of weeks…

As it turned out the Palace of Westminster had won the popular vote on Facebook (with Windsor Castle, Stonehenge and Blackpool Tower coming in second, third and fourth place respectively) so Bryan set about constructing the replica with nearly 1,000 packs of a particular brand of bridge playing cards which he favours. I’m very familiar with Parliament so it was nice to see that in addition to the Clock Tower (which houses Big Ben) he had also put a great deal of effort into creating very precise copies of the Victoria Tower, which sits at the other end of the building, as well as the black-clad tower that looms over the Central Lobby.

Of course the whole purpose of the evening was to bring the entire thing crashing down, so Soccer AM presenter Max Rushden turned up with a football to help out. To everyone’s surprise, while it only took one header to demolish the Clock Tower the rather sturdier Victoria Tower survived two shots before finally falling to the third!

While I was at the event I also got a tour of Aspers Casino which, with a floor space of 65,000 square feet, is the largest casino in the UK. Not being familiar with this kind of venue I hadn’t appreciated that visitors are welcome whether they’re gambling or not, so even if you’re not into poker or roulette you can still make use of the other facilities that are on offer. For example, the sports bar has an absolutely huge video wall and is open 24/7, so if you really need to watch Australian cricket at 5am with a stiff drink in your hand then you know where to come! There’s also another place to drink at the venue in the form of the super-chic Sky Bar, which has commanding views over the Olympic Park. Suffice it to say that if you’re looking for a classy place to sip cocktails, the Sky Bar at Aspers is several million miles ahead of any of Stratford’s other drinking establishments, as is the intimate private function room behind it which you can hire out for yourself and 40 of your closest friends…

I’ll be posting some video of the ‘knock-down’ later but in the meantime you can check out the rest of my photographs of the evening on the web here.