Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | Oct 2007 14 So what’s the difference? In Macau, VIP rooms deal almost exclu- sively with Junket customers—i.e. players who will wager sums of money in return for a percentage commission. On the other hand,VIP Rooms inwestern- style casinos are for the customers whose play is large enough to qualify them for a higher level of service and complimentaries. They are much like business club lounges for frequent travellers. The first and main differentiating fea- ture of a Macau VIP Room is the presence of a VIP Cage. The main currency in the VIP Cage is the Junket chips. Depending on how many arrangements the Operator may have, the VIP Cage may deal with one of more sets of Junket chips. The reason for this is to keep track of the players belonging to either dif- ferent Junket Agents or playing under dif- ferent commission schemes. (A casino resort owned by Jack Lam in the northern part of the Philippines contained four VIP rooms which in turn were reported to have a stag- gering 32 different sets of chips). The other main difference between the Macau VIP Rooms and their western coun- terparts is the prevalence of credit. In Aus- tralia, where it is not permitted for casinos to offer credit in some states, they use a quaint little mechanism called the cheque cash- ing facility (CCF). VIP patrons are ‘permitted’ to cash their personal cheques, and the ca- sino will agree to hold those cheques for a certain number of days before presenting them to the bank (usually around 5 work- ing days). The patron can ‘buy’ or redeem their cheque back at any time prior to that deadline. Cheques can range from as low as AUD$2,000 to as high as a million dollars. Some casinos may even require the client to have played and lost some money before this facility is granted. The credit arrangements within the Macau VIP rooms are more straightforward. A player may come in and be given a “Mark- er”. This marker commonly ranges from the hundreds of thousand of Hong Kong dollars to the tens of millions, and at the very, very top level, the hundreds of millions. Although commonly known as a Credit Marker, the actual situation may in fact not be credit at all. It just means that the VIP Room is issuing chips without any cash changing hands in the room. What may have happened is that the cash may have already been transferred to the Operator’s offshore account, and all the VIP Cage knows is that the Operator has directed it to issue a certain value of chips to this particular patron. However, more often than not, credit is actually involved, and the risk shared by both the Junket Agent and the Operator. A common term requested by Agents before concluding an arrangement with the Owner is that they will put up a certain sum, for ex- ample HK$2 million, as deposit, and the Op- erator will in turn grant a maximum credit facility of HK$4 million upon request to the Agent’s players. Credit markers for good established players of up to HK$10 million are not uncommon, with the single largest ever come across by yours truly was about HK$150 million (US$19.2 million). Unlike the VIP Host of a western-style VIP Room, a PR host in Macau is more akin to a Jill-of-all-trades, as she has to perform the duties of a companion, host, waitress and as- sistant.Macau PR hosts take orders and serve F&B. They may also be required to physically record each bet as it is placed as well as keep a real-time up-to-date record of the players’ (and house’s) win/loss performance. The Macau model is initially incompre- hensible to the risk-averse, liability-avoiding American and Australian operators. That’s not necessarily because of management policies, but rather, the legal environment from which they originate from. The latest news from Melbourne, Australia about a for- mer high-roller suing the casino for encour- aging him to play is a case in point. The PR host’s main function is to ‘roll’ the chips on behalf of the players. What this means is that they will take the cash chips won by the players to the VIP Cage, and ex- change them for junket chips, in order to earn the rolling commission. They will even do the scorekeeping for the baccarat outcomes, but most impor- tantly, they are sometimes trained and per- mitted to advise the customers on which bet to place next. To the western-trained mind, gambling is all about statistics and odds, and baccarat is one of those games where the experienced floor manager will tell their underlings that there is no system that will affect the house advantage, unlike black- jack. To the Chinese mind, baccarat is about patterns. You should hear them carrying on about the glorious patterns—such as the beautiful complete Dragon, Celestial Ping- pong or even Heavenly Tic-Tac-Toe—that they have been ever so fortunate to witness. So, the PR hosts will help record the scores (even though the table may already have an electronic display screen), and should the customer venture a query as to what the next outcome would most prob- ably be, the girls will give the answer de- pending on the pattern they have charted. In the event that the customer wins, the girls will more than likely get a nice little tip, and should they lose, no repercussions as it was VIP Rooms in Focus Entrance to Wynn Macau’s VIP Sky Casino