Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | August 2008 26 B accarat, and high stakes VIP baccarat in particular, rule in Macau. Last year baccarat in all its table forms made up 87.3% of turnover on games of fortune in Macau, according to statistics from the city’s Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau (DICJ). Gross gaming revenues for baccarat were 72.5 billion patacas (US$9.06 billion). In stark contrast, three-card poker, stud poker and Q poker combined brought in a little over one hundredth of that amount—884 million patacas (US$110.5 million). Texas Hold‘em poker didn’t even register in the 2007 statistics. After the introduction of the game on a cash play basis late last year, the Texas Hold’em format, dominant on the international tour circuit,managed to record revenues of 15 million patacas (US$1.87 million) in the first half of 2008. With such modest poker turnover relative to the baccarat take, Macau casino executives could be forgiven if they remain sceptical about the impact and appeal of poker.But in a dynamic and growing gaming market such as Asia, it doesn’t pay to ignore the potential of any demographic or any product. Given that land-based gaming is regulated and limited on the supply side by governments, the issue is can table poker offer a sufficiently attractive business model relative to the amount of resources allocated to it in terms of table space and manpower, and if so,can it reach a tipping point whereby it becomes a vital part of the Macau gaming product mix rather than a niche activity? We discuss that issue in the following story, ‘Value Bet.’ Profile Macau’s poker scene is certainly growing in visibility. At the end of July, Galaxy Entertainment Group’s StarWorld Casino held a soft opening for a new cash play poker room, with the management subcontracted to AsianLogic, a London-listed provider of online and land-based gaming. Last November,Macau held its first ever professional poker tournament organised by the Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) at the Grand Waldo Hotel in Taipa. The main event was so successful (attracting 352 players) that the organisers had to borrow extra tables from the training rooms of neighbouring casinos. On August 27 this year, poker in Macau will pass another milestone when the city hosts the first tournament in Asia to offer a US$1.5 million guaranteed prize pool for a single event. The contest, to be held at StarWorld, is organised by the Asian Poker Tour (APT), which AsianLogic purchased from a Singapore company in March. The APT has four tournaments in the Asia Pacific region this year. The first was in Manila in late May. After this month’s Macau event the APT will visit Seoul and Singapore. From next year the APT plans to hold six events annually. APT Macau has a buy in of US$5,300 and has already attracted some of the world’s top players interested in pitting their skills against new Asian talent and building their own celebrity profile in the region. Up to 140 of the 300-plus seats for the tournament have been reserved for players gaining qualification via satellite tournaments held by the APT’s partners, including online rooms such as PartyPoker and iPoker network members including Titan Poker and DafaPoker. World class “Our aim is to make the APT in Asia what the World Series of Poker (WSOP) is to North America and Europe,” says Chris Parker, the Upping the Ante Macau’s poker scene gets a shake up with the launch of a new high-prize tour event In Focus