Is Your Favorite Casino Like Them ?

Going On A Hot Streak At A Macau Casino Could Get You Killed

We've always wanted to go to Macao, China's casino capital, and try our hand at baccarat. Maybe take some names. But a spread in this week's New Yorker  magazine has made us reconsider that thought. The piece is called "The God Of Gamblers, why Las Vegas is moving to Macao," by Evan Osnos — and okay, Las Vegas may be moving to Macao, but that doesn't mean the strip in the East is like the strip in the West.
The main, most terrifying difference that we noticed, is that a hot streak in Macao could get you into major trouble. Like — someone trying to kill you type of trouble. Take the case of Inveterate Gambler Ping, for example:
From the New Yorker:

About four months into (Ricardo) Siu’s streak, a gossip column in the Apple Daily, a popular Hong Kong paper, took note of a “mysterious” figure making the rounds in Macau, said to be amassing a fortune as large as a hundred and fifty million dollars. “Is he extremely lucky or does he have the real magic touch?” the paper asked in January, 2008. The next day, a member of Hong Kong’s legislature, Chim Pui Chung—a devoted gambler himself—told the paper that he had heard people hailing the new high roller as the “God of Gamblers,” borrowed from the title of a Hong Kong movie starring Chow Yun-fat.A streak of that scale was also likely to attract suspicion.

Macau garners its share of creative casino cheats; last summer, local police arrested members of a gang accused of embedding miniature cameras into card-shuffling machines. Too much success can be cause for distrust. A casino’s advantage in baccarat—about 1.15 per cent—ordains that the chances of winning all but evaporate for a gambler after thirty thousand hands. A dedicated player can draw a thousand hands in a weekend and come out ahead, but after seven months almost nobody should go home a winner.

Not long after the article appeared dubbing Siu the God of Gamblers, his twenty-year-old son received a series of anonymous threatening phone calls. Then one night someone slipped into Celebrating Fortune village and tried to set the family house on fire. Finally, Siu’s friend Wong Kam-ming, who had introduced him to several V.I.P. rooms, received an angry call. The man on the other end demanded a meeting to discuss the question of Inveterate Gambler Ping’s having cheated.

So yeah, if you're in Macao, don't just quit while you're ahead... quit early.

You Will Not Believe The Crazy Stuff Inside Wynn Macao


This week, the New Yorker's Evan Osnos heads to the former Portuguese trading outpost to see just how crazy things have gotten there.

Steve Wynn's double-hotel complex stands out in the piece as being particularly depraved
How insane is it?

    One of the Michelin-rated restaurants has an in-house poet that writes personal verses for every V.I.P.
    The same restaurant also has tiny white leather stools positioned next to tables just to place your handbag.
    There are separate in-house Chinese and Western wedding planners
    There's a tree in the main atrium made entirely of 24-karat gold
    The hotel houses the largest jellyfish tank in the world
    The Louis Vuitton outlet is said to generate more sales than any other LV store worldwide