Inside Asian Gaming

September 2012 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 51 Asian Gaming 50 – 2012 “ReferaFriend”program;daily“LuckyLottery” drawings; food and beverage promotions; and special tables where beginners can play for free and PKC’s“Poker Girls”are on hand to provide instruction. “Poker Secrets,” another brainchild of Kings Consulting, launched earlier this year on Macau’s free satellite broadcaster Lotus TV. It’s a mix of ESPN-style game coverage with tutorials, guides and commentary which Mr Yu hopes will carry the word into the millions of households across East Asia that comprise Lotus’ reach. 49 Winfred Yu President Kings Consulting Ltd Poker’s worldwide popularity has yet to make the leap to the world’s largest gambling market, but that’s changing, albeit slowly, thanks in part to Winfred Yu, an enterprising poker pro who combines an aficionado’s love for the game with a unique flair for marketing. Mr Yu, a fixture on the Asian tournament circuit, learned the ropes as the manager of a casino poker room in Ontario, where he emigrated with his family from Hong Kong as a teenager. He’s returned to his native country with a novel concept called Poker King Club, a spacious, impressively appointed 11-table salon on the third floor of StarWorld Hotel and Casino that’s been generating considerable buzz as home to the “Big Game,” where whales normally found at the city’s high-stakes baccarat tables are swimming in droves to test their moxie and their bankrolls against top pros in Texas Hold ’em contests with blinds running as high as HK$30,000/$60,000. Mr Yu believes Poker King Club has the potential to bring poker in from the cold in Macau by combining the best elements of VIP marketing with a bit of Hollywood-style romance and good old-fashioned mass- market hustle. Backed by young junket lion Suncity Group in partnership with Mr Yu’s Macau- based Kings Consulting, Poker King Club manages, promotes and staffs the room in exchange for a fee, an arrangement that makes it a bit more palatable financially for StarWorld to diversify its baccarat-centric offering. It’s a model that’s employed with success in casino sports books the world over, and one Mr Yu and Suncity hope to replicate throughout the region. Staffed with hostesses and chip runners and fitted with all the comforts and services a high roller would expect, Poker King Club also has introduced innovations the average player can appreciate: like a rewards card; a 50 Paul Steelman CEO Steelman Partners Paul Steelman has reached almost iconic status in the world of casino design, with the mere attachment of his name to a project sufficient to generate excitement among industry analysts, and even gamblers. His masterpieces can be spotted instantly in Macau. He first established a name for himself in Asia by inventing the stadium-style casino at Sands Macao, which opened in 2004 as the city’s first decidedly mass-market gaming venue. His firm, Las Vegas-based Steelman Partners, went on to create distinctive designs for the Hard Rock Casino at Melco Crown Entertainment’s City of Dreams and the cheap and cheerful conversion of a department store to create SJM’s Oceanus. Using lessons frombehavioral psychology, Mr Steelman has formulated a set of “rules of casino design” that work to lure people into a property and keep them there. These rules include ensuring that exits—actual exits, not just exit signs—are clearly visible (which apparently keeps players at the tables for an average of five minutes longer) and using curved rather than straight corridors (which makes visitors feel there is more to the property than they have seen, encouraging them to return). According to Mr Steelman, today’s architectural trends can often end up as tomorrow’s design disasters—“themed” casinos, for instance, which he considers faux pas . One sinking copycat theme we were spared was a Titanic casino. In 1998, immediately after the movie’s box office success, he recalls, “A guy called me up and brought in a drawing made by a sign guy. Here was the Titanic casino with melting ice in Las Vegas. That year, I saw four people come in with the Titanic casino idea.” He also has strong views on high-limit gaming areas, having designed them for Galaxy Macau, The Venetian Macao and The Plaza Macao. He has led the move away from the traditional Asian VIP gaming room, basically “staid, wood-paneled, windowless Louis XIV rooms,” to facilities that are more space-based than decor-based. “How excited can you get over the wood-paneled room?” he once asked in an interview with Inside Asian Gaming . “I think high-rollers like it a little simpler, to be honest.” More recently, Steelman Partners has been involved as architect and interior and lighting designer for MGM Grand Ho Tram in Vietnam and Solaire in Manila. Expected to open in 2013, MGM Grand Ho Tram will be the first of five large-scale integrated resorts planned for a section of coastline in Vietnam near Ho Chi Minh City. In the Philippines, construction work for the US$1 billion Solaire commenced in 2010. It is the first of four resort casinos expected to open on a strip of reclaimed waterfront land in Manila Bay called Entertainment City. The firm also has received several new large-scale entertainment design commissions in China, and outside the region is juggling multiple projects from the United States to continental Europe. Born in a casino town—Atlantic City—Mr Steelman currently splits his time between homes in Las Vegas and Mammoth Lakes, California. In 2010, Steelman Partners was ranked by Architectural Record magazine as the 56th largest architectural firm in the United States, with more than US$59 million in revenues.