Macau – all about the casino action
What a place Macau is!
You can read the analysts reports on how gaming revenues in Macau continue to climb and dwarf figures in Las Vegas by ever increasing multiples; you can see pictures of the latest and greatest mega integrated casino resort to open its doors; you can hear stories of the players and their voracious propensities to gamble, or of the mysterious junkets bringing in higher rollers from China. But none of this prepares you for what you will see when you take your first stroll through the gaming floor of one of Macau’s casinos.
The Venetian Macau has the largest gaming floor of any casino in the world. It sprawls over 550,000 square feet and contains 800 gaming tables (most of them baccarat) and you won’t find too many spare seats at these tables at any given time. At some of the tables punters stand 3 and 4 deep, leaning in to place their bets then shouting encouragement to the seated player who is going through the ritual of peeking at each of the two cards dealt to the hand he/she has bet on.
One edge of the first card is bent up slowly but forcefully to reveal only the suit symbols along the card’s side, then turned 90 degrees and bent again for another peek. They are then either blown on, further prolonging the agony of surrounding players, or thrown face up onto the table to either shouts of delight or anguish as the deal is completed. Some players have won, some have lost but almost always the cards have been utterly destroyed!
Baccarat’s a really simple game. Once you’ve placed your bets there’s nothing more you can to do to influence the game outcome. Either the Player hand wins, the Banker hand wins or its a Tie and depending on which of these outcomes you’ve bet on you win or lose. Logic dictates that no amount of bending, blowing, ripping, tapping, slapping or whatever other ritual is employed will change the value of the cards once dealt. But logic has no place here. Neither does the idea of a laid-back, fun night out. You get the feeling this is all strictly business rather than pleasure.
The atmosphere is intense. More like the trading floor of stock exchange than a place of entertainment, although you won’t see too many suits and ties. Players interpret the casino’s ‘smart casual’ dress code pretty loosely and there are more than just a few wearing clothes that look like they were retrieved from an alley dumpster…tatty runners, stained pants, moth eaten shirts, old socks warn under sandals, hotel issue slippers (I think this is against dress code but I did see a few).
An elderly gentleman dressed in just such alley-couture shuffles up to a medium limit table and you think, ‘how on earth did he scrape together the HKD 500 required for a single bet?’ While you ponder this, he reaches into a satchel bag and pulls out an inch think wad of thousand dollar notes and drops it on the table to be exchanged for chips!
This is just the Venetian. Over the road at the Galaxy or City of Dreams you’ll find similar scenes. I can only imagine Staney Ho’s Grand Lisboa and neighbouring casinos in town are just as, if not more frenetic.
View from the Venetian looking at the recently opened Galaxy
Away from the casino floors the pace is very different. For a place with so many visitors/gamblers, the streets are eerily quiet…especially in the newer Cotai Strip area. Even in the city of Macau itself activities that aren’t casino related don’t seem to attract much attention.
During a night out at the grey hound races the stands were completely empty. During a boat cruise I initially thought that the guys from Bodog88 who were hosting the trip had extravagantly hired out the entire boat (2 floors, 50+ dining tables) because aside from our small group and the boat staff there was nobody else on the boat. Turns out they hadn’t hired out the entire boat. We were the only ones in Macau interested in dinner and a cruise.
I suspect if those 50 tables were for baccarat rather than dining, the boat would have been a lot fuller!
view of the Grand Lisboa from Macau Inner Harbour
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Quieter side of the Venetian - its Grand Canal (indoor) shopping mall
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