A world divided by four

This article first appeared in the Mar/Apr 2010 issue of World Gaming magazine.

Poker is flourishing in Macau at the moment. Let’s look at the Macau poker rooms and what they offer to both the established poker players and those of you that want to take up the game. There are four poker rooms currently operating in Macau but you can expect that number to increase in the future. The four rooms are PokerStars Macau at Grand Lisboa, the Wynn poker room, the Poker King club at StarWorld and the Venetian poker room.

StarWorld was technically the first casino to offer poker games. In August 2007 they installed five electronic poker games played on ‘PokerPro’ tables with no human dealer. Back then if you wanted to play poker, you had to go to StarWorld. These machines were always full but unfortunately StarWorld were too slow to realise the potential of setting up a live card room. PokerStars grabbed the opportunity and StarWorld were left without a proper poker room.

The first ever live tournament was the Pokerstars.net Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) event in November 2007, which was held at the Grand Waldo.

The Grand Lisboa had the first live poker room in Macau, opening in February 2008. It was a big success at Grand Lisboa from the very beginning. Originally they had eight tables that were all full on the weekends. People had to queue up for a seat. The poker room was in a great location that attracted many gamblers who had heard about poker and were interested in giving it a go.

PokerStars Macau opened a live poker room at the Grand Waldo in May 2008. It was very slow, presumably due to Grand Waldo’s location. Back then, playing poker was very profitable. As long as you had some experience and were selective with your starting hands, it was easy to win. Soon the word got around and professional players from all over the world started coming. This just made the poker room even more popular. All of a sudden PokerStars Macau was becoming one of the most talked about poker rooms in the world. However, they were never going to have the market all to themselves, and things slowed down a little when the Wynn poker room opened in November 2008. In March 2009 PokerStars Macau relocated to and merged with Grand Lisboa’s poker operation. In order to compete with Wynn, PokerStars Macau developed a strategy of combining cash games and tournaments, which is a unique characteristic of their room.

At the moment, Grand Lisboa is the home of tournament poker in Macau. The APPT hold a leg of their tour there every year and that tournament is quickly becoming one of the must-not-miss events on the world tour. There is also the more locally-targeted Red Dragon tournament series which is continuing to grow and attract the cream of the local poker players. Grand Lisboa’s cash games feed off the regular tournament program. During weekdays, there are usually three or four cash tables running. On the weekends or public holidays when there are bigger tournaments you can expect at least 10 cash game tables. The games tend to be targeted towards the local smaller market and many of the games have a blind structure of HK$10/HK$20.

Wynn was the first of the foreign owned casinos to open a poker room. Because of their rich experience and outstanding service, it took a lot of customers from Grand Lisboa. Also there are lots of high rollers in Wynn’s VIP areas, so Wynn quickly replaced Grand Lisboa as the leading poker room. It became a happy hunting ground for high stakes play. During peak times, it’s very hard to find a seat at Wynn with lots of people queuing up for their shot at the game. Even late at night during the week don’t be surprised to wait for two or three hours for a seat.

Wynn decided that they were going to target the top end of the games and they increased their blinds. There are only a handful of small HK$10/HK$25 blind tables, the rest are HK$25/HK$50, HK$50/HK$100, HK$100/HK$200 and HK$200/ HK$400 tables. Even HK$500/HK$1k, HK$1k/HK$2k and HK$3k/HK$6k tables are starting to appear for the fearless high rollers and top professionals. These highstake cash games attracted a lot of worldclass poker professionals from all over the globe. WSOP bracelet winners and wellknown poker celebrities who are regularly seen on television coverage of poker joined the hunt for gold at Wynn.

Wynn could have the opportunity to dominate Macau’s poker market. Unfortunately its slow expansion annoyed a lot of the local customers. Many customers felt they were never going to get a game there so they headed straight to some of the other poker rooms. It’s a shame as this room has plenty to offer all who play there. In addition, Wynn was the first (and at this stage the only) room to offer Pot Limit Omaha (PLO). PLO is the next big game that is taking the poker world by storm and it is the kind of game that will suit the local market’s love of gambling and risk taking.

StarWorld eventually created a live poker room which was contracted to Koreans to run. This room was branded the Asian Poker Tour (APT) room, after the second poker tour currently running in Asia. Even though StarWorld held the APT Macau event every year, which was a poker festival which offered a fantastic range of international tournaments, the APT poker room at StarWorld struggled to break through. Unfortunately it was not successful and eventually closed.

Late last year the poker room at StarWorld was contracted to Sun City, and they have changed the name of the room to the Poker King club. This has brought a relocation of the room and a huge advertising budget that has included a big budget movie, The Poker King. The club was opened at the end of October 2009 and they are clearly determined to challenge the other poker rooms in Macau. StarWorld has already conquered a large chunk of the high stake market. HK$200/ HK$400 and HK$500/HK$1k games are quite commonplace and sometimes they even get bigger games. There are plenty of tables and the players on the smaller games are also well taken care of.

The power brokers behind Poker King are very determined to put their players first. They generously offer their members a player’s card that allows their players to receive bonuses, meals and other attractive comps. There are also activities like lucky prize draws every two hours and the daily best cards combination prize. These offers and incentives are policies that attract players. Competition means that the players get a better deal. Those involved with poker at StarWorld have learned a lot from their past experiences and the managers have spared no effort to offer great service and incentives.

Macau’s newest card room is the Venetian poker room. Its opening took everybody by surprise as no-one in the poker community was aware it was going to open. This backfired as the room was unknown and there was no advertising to tell people that the room was even there. This resulted in the room having a very slow start. They also decided to use plastic shoes to hold the cards in while they deal which is a very strange and confusing way of doing things.

The Venetian’s poker room has the massive advantage of having a huge gaming floor to draw players from. During peak times they are getting all of their 10 tables open but during the week it is often very quiet.

The Venetian doesn’t have the service of the Wynn Poker Room and they don’t have the player promotions that Poker King at StarWorld offers. They don’t have the history and the expertise that you can expect to find at PokerStars Macau. What the Venetian does have is the miracle of a massive gaming floor and an endless line up of new players wanting to learn about poker. In some ways it’s a miracle that the Venetian poker room is still open but it shows the importance the support of a big gaming floor offers to a new game like poker. At the moment, most Venetian tables offer the low limit game of HK$10/ HK$25 blinds. They do get some bigger HK$25/HK$50 and HK$50/HK$100 blind games there as well.

Call? Raise? Re-raise? Or fold? At the moment the world of poker in Macau is divided by four and the competition is heating up. So who is leading at the moment and who will be leading in the future? PokerStars and the Wynn room are both well established and are the current market leaders. The Poker King room is doing a lot of very good things and is certainly starting to pull back ground on their competition. The Venetian is still a long way behind the other three but they do have long term advantages that the other poker rooms don’t have if they can get their product right. Let’s wait and see.