Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2015 06:52:44 -0700
From: Rodney Chen
Subject: [BARGE] 30 hours in the Vegas of the Far East

A trip report about my visit to Macau.  Link to pics at the end of
the post who tire of my rambling prose.

My trip to Asia was just under two weeks.  The time there was mostly to 
see relatives, since it's been about 6 years since heading across the 
big pond, but I also planned to travel to Hong Kong.  It was always a 
connecting airport, and my friend had recently moved from the San 
Francisco Bay Area to Hong Kong to raise his family there.  With Macau 
just a short jetboat ride away, I scheduled an overnight trip and packed 
accordingly.

Note, while Macau has its own currency, the pataca (MOP), all gambling 
is done in HKD.  You technically can conduct transactions in HKD cash 
(taxis, restaurants, stores, etc.) so you don't need to pull out any 
local currency, but they may give you change in MOP.  It's ok for them, 
since there's a 3% premium (1 HKD = 1.03 MOP).  So I just planned to 
travel with a USD bankroll, and use the credit card and HKD to avoid 
having more foreign currency than necessary.

Anyone who has invested in casino stocks knows that Macau has absolutely 
crushed Vegas in revenue.  It's also not for low stakes or advantage 
play.  If you want live game action, you would not be surprised to see 
$500, $1,000, or ever $2,000 HKD minimums at the major casinos on 
weekends.  That's roughly $64.50, $129, and $258 USD.  (7.75 HKD = 1 
USD) http://money.cnn.com/2014/10/22/news/macau-casino-gambling/ The 
nosebleed poker game has been moved out of Bobby's Room and Ivey's room 
for a while now, it's a VIP room in Macau.  
http://www.pokernews.com/news/2014/03/tom-hall-reveals-intimate-details-of-macau-poker-17725.htm

Since I was only in the Hong Kong area from Friday evening until 
Wednesday, mostly to spend time with friends, I scheduled my Macau stay 
for Monday after sightseeing/eating/drinking with the buddies.  It was a 
short walk and subway ride from the Mong Kok/Tim Sha Tsui area to the 
Hong Kong/Macau jetboat ferry.  I arrive just after noon, pay $21 USD 
for a 12:30pm seat.  An hour later on a 42 mile water journey with 
speeds topping out at 53mph, two short immigration lines (short stay 
visas granted on entry for US citizens for both Hong Kong SAR and Macau 
SAR), and I exit the ferry terminal.

The casinos are in two areas, Macau (attached to mainland China), and 
Cotai.  Cotai is 2 square miles of landfill just to build a Vegas like 
strip out there.  All the major casinos have free shuttle buses between 
the ferry terminals, the mainland China border entrances, and their 
sister properties, so I never needed to hail a taxi.  I hop on the Wynn 
shuttle bus and 10 minutes later I'm dropped off at the entrance. (1)

I generally don't play any house games in Vegas, so yes, I was there to 
play some poker.  There's really only three places with poker tables in 
Macau, the Wynn, Pokerstars Live at the City of Dreams, and the Poker 
King Club at the Venetian.  None of them run more than a few tables of 
the lower limits, which during the evenings the waitlist could be hours.  
I find the Wynn poker room, they're running 2 $25/50 NL, $50/100NL, and 
one bigger game with stacks of $5,000 HKD chips with $100,000 HKD 
plaques behind.  I put my name on the board for the small game and grab 
some lunch, sign up for the players card, and wander the casino. (4)

An hour later I get a text message saying they have a seat for me.  I 
hit up the casino cage and exchange $500 USD to $3,810 HKD.  (7.62 
exchange rate, slightly worse than some exchangers in Tim Sha Tsui but 
better than City of Dreams cage @ 7.58, and obviously the airport @ 
7.25).  I wander back to the poker room and check out the opponent 
stacks to decide how much I want to buy in.  Most folks were in the 
$2k-$10k buy-in range, I ended up just starting with $2,500 so I can 
either reload a couple times or add to my stack once settled in so I'm 
not bullied out of pots.  If the game got juicy I still had a lot of USD 
behind so it would just be another cage visit.

Table looked to be more regulars, about 70/30 Mandarin vs Cantonese 
speakers.  The dealer would generally announce English for poker action 
("raise", "call"), but amounts were announced in Mandarin ("liang bai 
wu" for 250).  The first half hour I'm really just trying to make sure 
the language barrier doesn't hamper my play and stick to my basic core 
game.  A few calls to see a flop, miss, and fold to small bets to see if 
anyone else had anything, doing the same thing when I hit taking a 
couple pots when nobody calls my feeler bets. 

I call a min raise pre-flop with A7c late.  The flop comes 9c 8s 9c.  
There's another small $200 bet that's called by one other player that I 
call, and the 4c comes.  Nut flush, but there's still that board pair.  
Another small $400 bet, call, and I just don't smell someone having more 
than trips, so I see the river.  Blank, check, check.  I still haven't 
totally gotten the feel of the table, but now I don't think I'm being 
trapped.  Fire $1,200 out.  Call.  The other player calls quickly.  Ack, 
I wanted fold fold or call fold, but not call call.  I table my hand.  
Seat next to me "WAH, nut flush.", and the other two players muck. (2, 3)

Ok, now I have chips to play with, and the mild stress I had about not 
having enough bullets against the other players is gone.  I win a few 
more hands in an hour for modest amount, there's a mild amount of table 
respect even though they still think I don't understand what they're 
saying between hands.  I would have liked to have a few more paragraphs 
about actual poker play here...but I went card dead for the next 3 
hours.  I don't lose much to blinds and somewhat conservative play, and 
I cashed out at roughly the same amount I had after that flush payoff.

Not really a big deal to be card dead, and this is why.  The rake at all 
these tables is 5% to $200 HKD.  Pot has $225 HKD in it.  Guy bets all 
in for $1,750.  Another guy with a larger stack calls.  They have the 
same cards, take their stacks back, split pot.  House rakes $185 HKD.  
Yes, that's a $23.80 USD rake for one hand, at least you don't tip the 
dealer.  By the time I leave, there's 3 $25/50 NL, 3 $50/100 NL, 2 
larger NL games, and a $100/200 PLO game, and the waitlists are about 
10-15 deep in all of them.

So I got to observe other tables while I kept getting baby offsuit 
cards, and it's definitely a softer game than Vegas overall.  The 
$50/100 NL game could probably beat the rake as other folks have said 
it's better than the $25/50 game and obviously even softer on weekends, 
but I got my poker fix in Asia checked off my bucket list.  There's 
definitely some angle shooting to watch out for.  The player next to me 
had a $5,000 HKD chip at the back of his stack, and one dealer called him 
out on it and it was moved out front on top, but after the next down 
that chip would migrate back to the bottom.

I decide to check out the Macau casinos, saving the Cotai strip for 
tomorrow.  I cross the street to Starworld first.  The first thing I 
noticed immediately, the gaming floor is smoke free as of October.  
Smokers would have to head to smoking lounges scattered around the 
casino, about half the size of your typical airport smoking lounge.  
There is still some VIP gaming areas (where membership is given after 
you gamble tens of millions of HKD) that allow it but there's a 
government proposal to ban smoking there too.  I noticed a few posts in 
hotels that show the measurements of air particulates in the hotel the 
same way you see the grade of a restaurant posted in front of the 
establishment. (5)

The casinos are AC style, security carding anyone at entrances to gaming 
areas who looks anywhere near underage.  There are metal detectors 
installed as well, one time it beeped loudly when I passed through and 
they didn't bother to follow up, even though I had my daypack and camera 
gear/tripod on me walking through.  I guess I don't look triad enough.  
The gaming floor in all these places are completely dominated by 
baccarat tables, and Sic Bo coming in a distant second.  Other Vegas 
house games like Blackjack, Roulette, Carribean stud poker, were around, 
and surprisingly enough, I didn't really run across any of the Pai Gow 
poker or tile games there.

I walk to the MGM Macau.  At the entrance there's a gold statue of a 
ram, reflecting the recent Lunar New Year Activities.  In the Grand 
Plaza, there's a 60'x100' massive art installation over a huge aquarium 
from a Portuguese artist.  Since Macau used to be a Portuguese colony, 
everything's generally labeled in Chinese and Portuguese outside, with 
the occasional trilingual sign that also includes English.  The MGM also 
has a Chihuly installation similar to the Bellagio in their lobby. (6-10)

Exiting the MGM, I walk around Nam Van Lake to take a few night shots of 
the casino skyline, walk past some of the older, smaller casinos and 
enter the Grand Lisboa.  Dinner at a congee/noodle shop, but didn't 
order their specialty dish (a bowl with a single strand noodle over 10 
feet long), walked across a pedestrian bridge to the Lisboa, and then 
eventually left there to head to my hotel. (11-14)

There are a number of brightly lit streets with small shops open 24/7 
hawking expensive watches and jewelry next to the casinos.  One reason 
Macau has been so popular is that for a number of years it was a major 
avenue for mainland Chinese to move their recently accumulated wealth 
out of the country and convert it to foreign currency.  There's a daily 
limit of 20,000 RMB ($3,250 USD) that can be brought from China, which 
leads to wealthy gamblers hiring junket operators to set them up in 
Macau with large credit lines.  It doesn't take much to guess that the 
junket operators and these stores facilitate a way to get around hard 
currency limits to gamble with, and eventually converted to HKD or USD 
(for a cut, of course). (15, 24, 25)

I check into the Holiday Inn, looking for basic accommodations with the 
assurance of a non-smoking room.  Being just after the Chinese New Year 
holiday on a weekday, I expected to not have a problem booking a last 
minute room.  On Expedia, prior to my trip, a simple room there ran 
about $125-140/night for Sun-Thur, about $180-220 on weekends.  Booking 
the night before dropped it to $90/night.  It had its own casino across 
a few floors, each run by a different gaming corporation.  These older 
casinos had lower ceilings and less flair, similar to downtown Las 
Vegas, but the few gaming tables they had were crowded by louder, 
superstitious locals.

The next morning I checked out, and set off for the touristy areas.  A 
3/4 mile hike through Sao Francisco Garden and up a hill takes me to the 
Macau Museum, situated on an old fort with a view.  There's a haze over 
the area, which may or may not be due to smog migrating from the 
Guangzhou/Shenzen region of China, land of the smart phone and 
electronic manufacturer factories.  I try not to think about the air I'm 
breathing in the region.  I head downhill to the ruins of St. Paul's 
Cathedral.  A total tourist trap, even setting off early had me weaving 
in and out between 20 tour groups all trying to take the same picture.  
I photobomb their selfies for about 15 minutes after grabbing a few 
shots of my own. (16-23)

Hoof it back to Starworld via Senado Square and catch their free shuttle 
to their newer sister property, the Galaxy Macau on Cotai.  On boarding, 
they give me a discounted meal voucher which I end up using in their 
food court.  The gaming area, is centrally located with the mall along 
the side.  It's never ending, as it's the size of 10 football fields.  
The gaming area of the MGM Grand in Vegas is about 170,000 sqft.  The 
gaming area at the Galaxy Macau is 550,000 sqft.  Close to the middle 
they were advertising a "World Baccarat Master of Macau" tournament and 
the case was showing off the $41 million HKD prize, with much thinner 
glass than the Binion's Million Dollar exhibit.  Even if the bills were 
all genuine, you were hundreds of feet from the nearest gaming floor 
security checkpoint and much farther to reach the resort exit if there 
were any Oceans 11 shenanigans. (26)

After wandering the shops and casino, I exit the Galaxy and take a few 
pics of the main drag of the Cotai strip and walk to the Venetian.  The 
walk between these newer casinos is long enough that there are free 
shuttle buses to take gamblers to the neighboring competing properties.  
The Venetian Macau is on steroids too, also clocking in at 550,000 sqft 
of gaming space, with their Grand Canal Shoppes above the gaming floor 
looking like exactly the Vegas counterpart, but just under 1 million 
sqft of retail and restaurants.  There are three canals and one outdoor 
lake for gondola rides.  I made a small friendly wager with a friend 
that the gondola operators would not be Asian, and snap a photo to send 
back as proof.  (27-29)

I find Lord Stow's Bakery to try a couple of their Portuguese Egg Tarts.  
I used to work near the Golden Dragon Bakery in Chinatown, San Francisco 
and their egg tarts were awesome.  The Portuguese egg tarts were closer 
to creme brulee in style with the burnt top and light custard vs the 
Chinese/Hong Kong counterparts.  I was trying to avoid spending money 
within the Venetian (the main reason of picking the Wynn over Poker King 
Club) but their main bakery was much farther south in Coloane and that 
was just not happening this trip.  There's water bottles easily 
available in all the gaming areas so I drank a couple and packed another 
to make up for it, and used the Venetian shuttle to return to the ferry 
terminal. (30, 31, 33)

But before the ferry terminal, I made a pass through the City of Dreams 
casino, home of Pokerstars Live.  They're the only poker room running 
daily tournaments, and there were no live games running that afternoon.  
The room has a few Poker Pro electronic tables, I believe that on 
weekends they can spread a $10/20 game there, max $100 rake (still, 
$12.90 USD).  The casino floor was pretty dead as well compared to the 
other places I strolled through. (32, 35)

At one point, Macau gambling was 7x of Vegas.  The Chinese government 
has been aggressively cracking down on corruption and it clearly has 
affected the casinos there, with latest revenue numbers showing as much 
as 40% decline vs last year.  So it's much more than the smoking ban 
that has affected Macau, it may not see that amount of action again for 
years.  Even in the downturn, it will still dwarf Vegas for gaming by a 
multiple.  The Galaxy Phase 2, Broadway, Studio City Macau are all 
opening in 2015, the Wynn/MGM Cotai and a casino replicating "Batman's 
Gotham City" planned, so there will be rabid competition for VIP play.  
Investors that supplied gamblers with capital are possibly headed back 
to the stock market, and gamblers have been eyeing other destinations 
like Australia or the Philippines, with the City of Dreams Manila grand 
opening this past Chinese New Year. (34)

I return to the Venetian to track down the Poker King Club and run into 
the only craps table I saw there, then over to an empty gaming floor.  
Security walks over since I'm in the middle of a dismantled deserted 
area and she tells me they moved straight across, so a 3 minute walk 
leads me to their newly re-opened location, giving them about 60% more 
space.  They had 2 $25/50 and 1 $50/100 with a few names on the board, 
but my time has run out and I'm headed back to Hong Kong to eat in SoHo 
and party in Lan Kwai Fong.  For more about the Macau poker scene, this 
blog post came out shortly after I returned from Asia.  
http://www.fulltilt.com/blog/poker-in-macau/

The jetboat ride was a bit more at $23, and was travelling at a slightly 
slower pace of 43mph, which was good since the waters were choppier.  
There were a few moments where the boat would slowly bounce higher and 
lower, then a bit of a hard crash after riding like a roller coaster for 
5 seconds, then the captain or autopilot makes a slight course 
adjustment or slows down 5mph.  There's a 19 mile vehicle bridge being 
built between Hong Kong and Macau, so in a couple years it may just be a 
bus or rail ride. (36)

30 hours in Macau.  I've got a small private photo gallery posted here: 
https://www.flickr.com/gp/beakertehmuppet/882ARo/  Numbers at the end of
paragraphs are the shot numbers in the album.  

Rodney