Smart Baccarat

a great report on Macau from civicmon Very much appreciated!

I was just in Macau last week and just wanted to give you a quick report since as the Baccarat king you'd have a heart attack if you saw Macau.

It's the game of choice, no doubt. It's known that 85% of Macau's gaming revenues come from Baccarat alone. In reality, I'd estimate 90% of all gaming tables at all casinos are Baccarat. I'm sure you're aware of the Chinese superstitions with gambling so I'll spare you the bulk of my comments but it's quite a sight.

I went to the Grand Lisboa (think the new Stanley Ho/STDM "Leaf" tower casino) and did fairly good at my game of blackjack. Went down pretty good but won most of it all back. That casino has 3 floors, effectively as the Chinese number floors with the "1st" floor actually what we call the 2nd floor, of gaming.

Baccarat is obviously king with minimums running into hundrends of thousands of HK$ and VIP rooms for parties and stuff but for the average guy, minimums are either $50/$100 HKD, so about US$7.5/$13 (US$1 = HK$7.75 at a fixed rate) I was there over a weekday night and the places weren't packed but there was more than enough business to make the place work.

The Grand Lisboa claims to offer the first craps game in Macau and Hold'em.. had two live hold'em tables with pit bosses from Australia running the games as well as one craps table. I'm unsure if the other majors have them as I never independently verified that. Typical Chinese games such as SicBo, their wonder-wheel sort of games are there but not in the sheer numbers that one finds the Baccarat tables.

There's a huge boom there but now there's arguments of oversupply. I was in the Wynn Macau which is a carbon copy of the Las Vegas property, but just smaller. Even has an Okada restaurant. There's a MGM, Crown Casino (an Aussie group) the infamous Venetian, the Sands, Pointe 16, most of the older STDM joints and a couple more (Macau "Studio City" for one) coming down the pipe. That's what is just opened now and there are already more under construction which includes expansions.

That being said, I think you'd enjoy a trip to HKG/Macau. Chinese casinos are not known to be lavish on the comps but that being said, if you got real money it can be done, however "real money" in numbers is always up for debate, just avoid the major Chinese holidays to up your chances (May 1, Chinese NY and some other time in August or October). I didn't even recall if alcohol was comped at tables as I just normally stick to water anyways. No one tried to sell me on player cards or anything, but I believe the Grand Lisboa and I know the Wynn had their own cards. Not sure about the Wynn's convertibility between their Las Vegas and Macau sites, likewise for LV Sands properties. Just watch the summers there.. imagine Orlando with casinos. It was in the low 70s F when I was there so it was really nice.

There are non-stop flights EWR/JFK-HKG and via ORD, SFO, LAX, YVR, YYZ etc. Spend a few days in HKG which is an awesome place if you never been and then a few more in Macau with some gaming and sight seeing as there's a slew of historical and culturally significant sites due to the unique heritage of the area.

Shanghai is about 3 hrs away flying from Hong Kong/Macau. There's some tricks to getting to Macau cheaper from Shanghai if you tag along on the trip itself (basically, gotta fly into the Chinese border city which can be more work than it's worth) as flights between Shanghai-Macau are overloaded with Taiwanese who are flying back/forth to Taiwan, thus the prices can be insane even at the best of times. Not sure about Seoul/Tokyo although a Macau-based charter get was supposed to fly Macau-Tokyo but not sure if that ever came about. HKG is an amazing airport inside and out, however, the train can have you at HK Island in about 25 minutes.

Macau can be done in one day as they're "turbojets" which are basically high-speed catamarans that run between a couple of HK (and Chinese) spots and back out in the evening. Tickets are easy to come by even just minutes before a launch, provided it's not a Friday or anything. Run something like every 15 min during peak times and once a half-hour in the overnight hours

One day will NEVER do the place justice if the visitor is a gambler.. Even the wife should be able to enjoy a few things there, I would think as the territory itself is pretty neat with a lot of Portuguese-inspired architecture and narrow, fascinating back streets and a nearly 500 year European history which is unparalled for anywhere else in Asia just based on it's uniqueness. The city is changing in a major way and I'm almost tempted to say that it really has turned into a mini-Vegas, it's not always all for the better. That being said, the territory was nothing more than a weird backwater until gambling hit the city and despite China closing off, Hong Kong became a world financial power.

I was last in Macau 5 years ago and it's insane how different the place is. The Wynn/MGM are on a stretch of reclaimed land called "Nape" (or, Na-Pay) which is directly opposite where the classic Lisboa is. North of there is some sort of Fisherman's Wharf complex which is designed to suck some of the people away from the Casinos but hasn't really taken off very well. The Pointe 16 is weird, it's on the opposite side of the territory directly opposite the Chinese mainland (and a very pleasant Chinese city called Zhuhai with some AWESOME food! Probably the best local cuisine on the Chinese mainland). Most of the rest of the developments such as the Venetian and some more local joints are a bit south of the peninsula proper on another stretch of reclaimed land called the Cotai Strip, between COloane and TAIpa islands (hence the name). There's a ferry that runs straight from HK direct to Taipa now although most go to the "Termino Maritimo" as it's known in Portuguese in Macau.

Weird stuff with Portuguese language there (case in point: "STOP" is like we see here, but they'll have DUI warnings in Portuguese...) but virtually no one speaks it other than the handful of Portuguese who are still there and most anyone who speaks anything other than Cantonese/Mandarin will speak English.

I stayed at a small guesthouse instead of one of the casinos but while I'm sure the service and facilities are top notch, don't expect a slew of "side activities" as Tryst at the Wynn Macau is closing (or closed, unsure the actual status) due to lower than forecast usage and aside from the usual gold-crusted rolexs and ferrari dealer, the shopping in the territory is bland at best. Most people from Macau just go to China these days as the prices are a lot better anyways.

Good deals can be had on the weekdays as well. The Macau Ferry Terminal aka "Shun Tak Center" on HK Island has a hundred travel agents who can usually give you a good deal on a room and get the turbojet tickets thrown in for free on top of that. Weekends see the obvious price rises that AC sees.

FWIW, and this is somewhat important, but HK$ are the currency of choice there. Macau has a currency known as the Pataca (usually signed "MOP") which trades at US$1/MOP 8.15 vs. US$1/HKD$ 7.75 - The Chinese RMB is just about at US$1/7RMB but the cages and dealers usually only want HKD but will change anything else into HKD to buy chips at a currency change booth. Virtually everyone outside the casinos will take HK$ at an assumed 1:1 rate but surprisingly they didn't at McDonalds when I wanted a soda and some nuggets as an entry fee to use their bathroom. So I just ran in and split Long story short: If you go, don't sweat not having MOP but get a fistfull of HK$. Most ATMs outside the casinos give HK$ or MOP, it'll ask. You can also change USD as well but MAKE SURE YOU HAVE PERFECT, CRIPS BILLS at the casinos This cannot be stated enough as they reject bills for the most minute problems. It was the source of most North Korean forged US$ which is a lot of the reason. Most moneychangers on the streets and alleys will accept the imperfect ones but they're typically not near the casinos.

In Macau, you can also bet on soccer and NBA using typical Vegas lines but there's not a lot of that going on at all. The Grand Lisboa had it.

If you really want to see an old Chinese gambling hall, the "Lisboa" is your best bet. This may be torn down in the near term but it was the original "resort" casino that the city had for 30 or so years before the Americans came in. It's everything you expect from a gambling hall, crowded tables, lots of screaming and no fresh air. It's crowded, clustered and interesting although the new casinos do have a more "fresh" appeal to them. There's a few more shadier ones out there as well from the old Stanley Ho monopoly days.

Labels: baccarat, civicmon, macau