World Gaming Magazine

29 WGM #58 2018/05 wgm8.com NO COMMISSION BACCARAT TAKES ON THE WORLD Wadhwa first introduced his NCB to the Palm Beach casino in Sri Lanka in 1987. The NCB game was popular with Indian players who were customers of casinos in both Sri Lanka and Nepal and the players insisted the game be spread in Nepal, which it was. NCB quickly grew in both countries until the traditional commission-style baccarat simply died out. As luckwouldhave it, DavidPacker, a casino consultant working at the Casino Iguazu in Argentina, travelled to Nepal in 1995 to do some work for the Malaysian gaming and lottery company, Berjaya. This involved visiting the casinos in Nepal, where the NCB game was already long established. Berjaya was also a partner in Casino Iguazu, which is how the game found its way to Argentina. Before long it had spread to The Conrad Casino in Punte del Este, Uruguay, which opened in 1997. This was through Brazilian players who played in Argentina and Uruguay, just as the game had spread from Sri Lanka to Nepal a decade earlier through Indian players who played in both countries. In 1998, NCBmade its way back over the Pacific Ocean. David Hilton, then Vice President of Casino Operations at Conrad Jupiters (now The Star Gold Coast) in Australia, had learnt of the NCB game as it was played in Punta Del Este, and Jupiters applied to government regulators to introduce the game. Later that year, Jupiters’ Casino Manager, Andrew MacDonald, moved to Melbourne’s Crown Casino, where he took on responsibility for table game development. He subsequently introduced NCB to Crown Casino and it eventually spread to most Australian casinos. In 2000, representatives from Genting Highlands casino (now Resorts World Genting) visited Crown in Melbourne and took several game concepts back to Malaysia, including NCB. Once at Genting Highlands, NCB then spread to Genting subsidiary company Star Cruises, a casino cruise company based in Hong Kong. It didn’t take much of a leap to sail across the Pearl River Delta to Macau and then quickly around the rest of Asia. How ironic that the 4,000km journey from Sri Lanka to Macau would take a 32,000km detour via Argentina, Uruguay, Australia, Malaysia and Hong Kong! NCB is widely available around Macau, so the next time you play, why not give the no commission version of the game a try?