A board game cafe in London charges you twice, and the second charge is the one nobody prints.
There is a gaming admission fee, which is the number every listicle quotes. Then, at some of them, there is a minimum spend on food and drink on top of it, and at others there is a cap on how long you may sit there. Two people playing for an afternoon can walk out having paid anywhere between sixteen pounds and forty three, for what looks from the outside like the same thing.
Here is what each one actually charges, how long it lets you stay, and which days it opens at all.
What a board game cafe in London actually costs
| Where | The admission | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Draughts, Waterloo and Stratford | £7.95 off peak, £9.95 peak | Three hour limit, and no food or drink brought in |
| Library Pot, Richmond | £6.50 per session | £15 minimum spend per person, and it shuts Monday to Thursday |
Read the right hand column. Library Pot looks like the cheaper door at £6.50 and is the more expensive afternoon once the minimum spend lands, unless you were going to eat anyway. Draughts looks dearer and is not, provided you leave inside three hours.
Draughts, which is the one people mean
Draughts
- Address
- Arch 16, Leake Street, Waterloo, SE1 7NN. Also 5 Aquatics Walk, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Stratford, E20 2AS
- Nearest
- Waterloo, or Stratford for the second site
- Price
- Gaming admission £7.95 off peak, £9.95 peak. Under 12s free, 13 to 17 at £4 off peak and £5 peak
- Standing
- Over a thousand board games across two sites
How to get in
The original and the biggest, with more than a thousand games and staff who will pick one for you and teach it, which is the part that makes it work for people who do not play. Off peak is midweek from opening until 4pm. Peak is midweek after 4pm and all day Saturday, Sunday and bank holidays. Two rules worth knowing before you go: <strong>gaming admission is limited to three hours</strong> subject to availability, and you cannot bring your own food or drink in. The Waterloo site is in the Leake Street tunnel, which is worth walking through on the way.
The Waterloo arch sits inside the Leake Street graffiti tunnel, so the approach is a legal street art tunnel under the station. That is a better ten minutes than most London attractions charge for.
Library Pot, which is a weekend proposition
Library Pot
- Address
- 86 Kew Road, Richmond, TW9 2PQ
- Nearest
- Richmond, about five minutes on foot
- Hours
- Friday 6.30pm to 11pm. Saturday noon to 5pm and 6pm to 11pm. Sunday noon to 4.30pm and 5pm to 9.30pm. Closed Monday to Thursday apart from occasional meetup evenings
- Price
- £6.50 per person per session, with a £15 minimum spend per person
- Standing
- A licensed restaurant and board game cafe with several hundred games
How to get in
<strong>It runs in fixed sessions rather than open hours</strong>, which is the thing to understand before booking: an afternoon session and an evening session, with a gap between them, so you are booking a slot rather than dropping in. Closed Monday to Thursday. Booking is online only, not by telephone, and they reserve the right to charge a no show fee. The minimum spend is per person per session and is the real cost here.
It is also the only one of these anywhere near a good dinner afterwards, which the Richmond restaurants page covers, with the warning that the best kitchen there does no dinner on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Sunday.
The others worth knowing
Cakes and Ladders in Wood Green is a converted double decker bus with games on it, which is a different kind of evening and a good one if the novelty is the point rather than the library.
Loading Bar in Stoke Newington has been doing games and drinks since 2010 and leans toward video games alongside the tabletop, so check which you are getting before you travel for it.
How to get it right
Work out the real cost before you pick. Admission plus minimum spend, multiplied by the number of you. That is the only comparison that means anything, and it reorders the list.
Go off peak if you are going to Draughts. Midweek before 4pm is two pounds a head cheaper and the room is quiet enough to learn something complicated.
Ask the staff to choose. Every one of these places employs people whose job is to pick a game for your group and teach it in five minutes. Arriving with no idea is the normal way to use them, not a failure.
Check the day. Library Pot is closed four days out of seven. That is the single most common way an evening planned around one of these falls over.
Everything here was taken from each venue’s own published information in September 2026 and rechecked on 2 October 2026. Admission prices and session times change. Confirm before travelling, particularly the minimum spend, which moves more often than the door price.
Where to go next
For the rest of the category, activity bars in London covers darts, shuffleboard, crazy golf and ping pong, with the booking rules for each. The pub quiz guide is the free version of the same evening, and karaoke is the loud one.
If you want the Leake Street tunnel and the rest of the odd end of London, unusual and unique things to do in London covers what is worth the journey and, more usefully, how many days a year each place is actually open.
Written by Robert J Wills, no. 176 in the guide.
Last checked 2 October 2026 against the venues' own published information. Nobody pays to appear here and we take no bookings.
