Inside Asian Gaming

August 2008 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 31 currently looks like a promising business model in search of an audience. Poker is popular around the world, but such is the feverish grip of baccarat on the Chinese psyche that no one can yet be sure how much demand for poker there will be in Macau. Mr Parker of the APT is confident that poker is on the rise in Asia generally and the Pearl River Delta in particular. “Asians, having been fanatical about baccarat, are now turning to poker, not necessarily as an alternative, but as a complementary activity. Effectively, they’re having a ‘double dip’,” he says. “We think—contrary to what is sometimes said—that Asian people do like to pit themselves against other players, rather than just riding their luck against the house as happens in baccarat,” says Mr Parker. “In a game like poker that is 70% skill and 30% luck, players can use their wits to calculate odds, feel the direction of the game and play successfully,” he adds. “We’ve found that if you go to the World Series of Poker events and the European Poker Tour tournaments, for example, there are a lot of Asians playing. In Hong Kong, many restaurants have play for fun poker games on Friday nights.” Cash play The operating model currently used in Macau’s handful of poker rooms is cash play, where players buy in to a game up front, and the tax and house rake comes straight off the top, leaving a prize pool for players. In poker, the house is merely a facilitator and umpire of game play, rather than an adversary (with the exception of a format such as Caribbean Stud, where players face the house). Provided the buy-in price and the house rake have been set at a level that reflects the balance between table supply and player demand, the operator should be able to maintain an acceptable yield per square foot of gaming space. The ability to make such a detailed cost-benefit analysis could be especially attractive to Macau operators faced with possible future supply-side restrictions by government on table numbers and floor space. Table rules In most legal casinos where poker is played, table stakes rules apply, meaning a player may only invest the amount of chips he has in front of him into the current pot. If he runs out of chips during the hand, a side pot is created in which he has no interest. Table stakes protocol generally also includes the rule that a player may not remove chips from the table during a game. If poker were to take off with Macau’s high-rollers, it would be fascinating to see how regulation of the game would develop in a market with a love for high- stakes play.Would themarket simply create games with high buy-ins or would there be commercial pressure to grant credit ‘in play’, with a house rake on each hand, similar to the unregulated poker games portrayed in Hollywood films? If Macau’s regulators were persuaded down this road, it could create a new market for the cross-border agents who currently provide lines of credit for VIP baccarat players from mainland China. A rake on each poker hand played would, in theory, create incentives for the house to maximise the number of hands played per hour. In the US, some casinos operate time-limited cash games as a way of speeding play and thus building volume on the rake. Without time constraints, it seems unlikely that casino poker games in Macau would consistently reach the 50 hands per hour typically achieved in online poker rooms. Game style Poker in its traditional forms is not so much about speed or slowness of play, but (for the average player) consistency of style, so that important information about the quality of a hand is not ‘leaked’ to an opponent. Thus, the pace of the ‘slowest’ player normally determines the pace of each game. Only very experienced poker players have the ability to play in a consistently inconsistent manner and know how and when to mix up styles. Computer poker games that limit the time that can be taken to play each hand have proven popular, especially in the home entertainment market. When it comes to cash play in casinos though, operators need to remember that poker isn’t just a revenue source.It’s a pastime that inspires as much passion and excitement among players as a high-intensity game of baccarat. The trick with poker is not to show it until the game is over.