Inside Asian Gaming

November 2010 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 27 In Focus of chips unique to that room are used. Although the casino operator provides the VIP room with dealers and security personnel, the other staff within the room are generally employed by the VIP room operators. These staff are mostly public relations (PR) hosts (who perform the function of ‘rolling’ chips between the players and the cage, exchanging cash chips for junket chips) and junket cashiers. You can easily tell the VIP room operator’s staff apart from the casino’s staff because the former are usually adorned in strikingly colourful two- piece suits. The PR hosts are predominantly young, good looking Chinese ladies, while the cage is mostly staffed by middle aged ladies. The VIP room managers will be older, andmay be either male or female. The junket cage manager is usually a long-serving, loyal and trusted employee, who more often than not has a direct reporting line to the VIP room operator, independent to that of the room manager. Above the managers sits the general manager or the owner’s representative, who is the primary liaison for all the different junket operators who bring their clients to that particular room. By contrast, the VIP rooms in casinos in LasVegas and Australia are a direct extension of the casinos themselves—i.e. all the staff and action within are directly controlled by the casino. In Macau, VIP rooms deal almost exclusively with junket customers—players who wager sums of money in return for a percentage commission on their turnover. Western-style VIP rooms, on the other hand, are for customers whose play is large enough to qualify them for a higher level of service and comps. The first and main differentiating feature 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 VIP room 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 different junket agents or playing under different commission schemes. A single VIP cage may have to deal with several sets of chips—a casino resort owned by Jack Lam in the northern part of the Philippines contained four VIP rooms, which were reported to have 32 different sets of chips. The other main difference between Macau VIP rooms and their Western equivalents is the prevalence of credit. In Australia, where some states ban casinos from offering credit, the casinos use a mechanism called the cheque cashing facility (CCF). VIP patrons are ‘permitted’ to cash their personal cheques, and the casino will agree to hold those cheques for a certain number of days before presenting them to the bank (usually around five working days). The patron can ‘buy’ or redeem their cheque back at any time prior to that deadline. 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, where players are simply given a ‘marker,’ which commonly range from hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong dollars to the tens of millions, and at the very highest level, the hundreds of millions (tens of millions of US dollars). Although commonly known as a credit marker, in some instances, the marker may not actually involve credit at all. It just means that the VIP room is issuing chips without any cash changing hands inside the room. In reality, the cash may have already been transferred to the VIP room operator’s offshore account, and all the VIP cage knows is that the VIP room operator has directed it to issue a certain value of chips to this particular patron. Inmost cases, however, credit is involved, and the risk shared by both the VIP room operator and any junket agent involved. A common arrangement sees the junket agent put up a deposit, of say HK$2 million (US$250,000), while the VIP room operator in turn grants a maximum credit facility of HK$4 million to the agent’s players. The Macau 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 exchange them for junket chips, in order to earn the rolling commission. Beyond that, the typical PR host in Macau is a ‘Jill-of-all- trades’, having to perform the duties of a companion, host, waitress and assistant. 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. Macau PR hosts will even do the scorekeeping for the baccarat outcomes, but most importantly, they are sometimes trained and permitted to advise the customers on which bet to place next. To theWestern-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. To the Chinese mind, baccarat is about patterns. Therefore, 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 probably be, the hosts will be ready with an answer, depending on the pattern they have charted. In the event the customer wins, the host will more than likely get a nice little tip, and should he lose, there are generally no repercussions for the host as it was the customer who asked in the first place. Whereas the Western-style VIP room is usually a large, single room within a casino housing many tables, Macau casinos typically contain several separate smaller VIP rooms. The Western VIP room caters to a much broader range of customers, some of whom would be labelled as mass hall players in Macau if one was to only consider their average bet per hand. The Western VIP room is also more like a club lounge than a serious gambling room, and customer loyalty is mostly rewarded with comps in the form of show and event tickets, rooms, meals, etc, rather than the allimportant commission programme used to incentivise VIP players in Macau. While Macau PR hosts provide very individual and attentive service, appealing to the basic needs of ego and recognition, their Western counterparts are arguably more empowered and productive. The hosts in Western VIP rooms usually have to look after all the guests within the room whilst performing a wide range of functions, from manning the reception desk to making limousine bookings for customers. They rarely have the time or inclination to sit down and watch individual customers play each hand. A VIP room at Macau’s Grand Lisboa Casino