This article first appeared in the May/Jun 2010 issue of World Gaming magazine.
I often get asked my opinion on the best casino to play at in Macau. It’s a natural question for visitors to ask. With 33 casinos operated by six different operators in Macau, players are certainly spoiled for choice. Competition is a healthy thing – it means better deals for the customer. But it does create somewhat of a dilemma for players – where to play? Most visitors don’t have the time to try out all 33 casinos before settling on a favourite!
While we have our own subjective opinions, we here at the World Gaming bunker thought it might be fun to run a little experiment to find out how the casinos stack up against each other. Over the next month or two, we’ll be sending our WGM spies into the field and report back to you, the players, on the results of our playing expeditions. We’ll do the legwork so that you don’t have to.
Grand Lisboa
So what will we use as a measures of how good a casino is? Well, let’s face it, the odds and payouts on the table games are essentially the same in every casino. So what does vary from casino to casino? Casinos call it “customer experience” but that’s an all-encompassing term that includes many factors: luck, location, surroundings, hotel room quality and rates, service, dining options and probably a few more I can’t think of right now. Many of these factors are subjective and very hard to compare. Try answering this question – which casino is more beautiful, Wynn or the Plaza? Or which has the better restaurants: Grand Lisboa or the Venetian? Are the rooms better at StarWorld or City of Dreams? These are all tough questions, best left to later articles.
But there is one thing that is very easily comparable from casino to casino, right down to the last dollar. And that’s the value of the comps you receive for playing.Comps are cash right back in your pocket that the casino gives you for playing! All you need to do to get comped is join the casino’s player’s club and if you’re not getting your fair share of comps, you’re crazy! The casinos will pay for all sorts of expenses incurred in your trip to Macau – travel costs like ferries or airfares, hotel rooms, restaurant meals, transportation around Macau and much more. Why pay for these things when the casino is prepared to pick up some or all of the tab?
The Venetian
We’ll start off with the six flagship casinos: StarWorld, Wynn, MGM, Grand Lisboa, Venetian and City of Dreams. World Gaming will play the exact same period of time in each casino, with the exact same bet size and on the exact same games. Then we’ll reduce the player points we get down to a single cash value for each property so that you can compare the properties and see where the best deal is! This is going to be fun: some properties are going to be happy and some are going to have a little egg on their faces!
So stay tuned and be sure to pick up the next copy of World Gaming for the results…
