Read the thread (also the poster before you) that'll answer many of your questions. Wynn Palace opened a room but closed it already beginning of the year or something in favor of even more baccarat LOL. Galaxy also closed. No idea about MBP and as mentioned above have not been for a while but it's a safe bet that Wynn and Venetian will have almost all of the action

Any one have played Macau 50-100 100-200 during Chinese new year? The games are way better than normally? Chinese go to Macau during Chinese new year? Thank you for any answer.

Generally it would be the case, at least in previous years. Now it wouldn't make any difference even if the whole planet will arrive to Macau during CNY as perhaps only 0.0001% of them will ever get a seat at a boring table full of regs since the waiting lists will be 100+ long and additional problems with dealers availability during that period. Plus accommodation prices would be 2x at least as well.

any news about Pokerstars finding a new home?
macanese poker scene seems a bit boring without Pokerstars festivals.
Personnaly I found the Red Dragon held in Jeju to be a shame, the dragon's home is in Macau

It's all just rumors mainly for an extended period of time. Studio City seems like the location that is being discussed the most. Personally, I think Stars don't have a vision for poker in Macau for the time being and not enough people on the team to be involved in making the final business plan and offer it to the operators. For the foreseeable future I believe they will stick to running few tournaments in other Asia-Pacific countries skewed towards med-high buy ins which doesn't help revitalizing the current situation for poker economy and brand name. If i get to run the room in Macau someday though will make sure that it will be best

I think you are being harsh. I think PS did a good job if you consider that they offer a very unattractive package to casino operators if you consider revenue per sq ft and overall income vs. regular table games a casino can offer.
They left Grand Waldo for Grand Lisboa, got kicked from GL , back to Grand Waldo, went to CoD, got kicked from CoD … hopefuly find a solution soon with a casino that has some unused sq meters.
They created a product with personality with this Red Dragon thing, which is the best tournament in Asia. 1,000 players + at ~2,000 USD with many recreational players. There is no equivalent anywhere else in Asia. They organized high rollers that attracted many of the top tournament players in the world. They created low buyin product adapted for the local markets (the “Macau Millions”) which have no real equivalent anywhere else in the world.
Besides I always found Rex to be a good guy, always tried to improve his English, always tried to improve the product, always listened to constructive criticism.
Anyway, doesn’t really matter if you believe or not in PokerStars now as Mr. Stanley Choi is in charge of the Macau operations. : )

Just expressing my view on things based on 9 years experience playing in Macau as my main source of income. PS had a great team before the ownership transition last year and many of those people that i know personally have left for a reason. Under the original Stars ownership they had a big company to back up their at best breakeven business model in Macau together with some passion trying to attract crowd to play both live and online. You can have all the best and experienced tournament staff in the world but it would not make much difference if you do not have a strong business leader in your team being able to adapt to changing Macau market, government regulations and etc.

They can still run Red Dragon in Macau even every month making short term arrangements with various casinos but we're talking about a proper cash game 24/7 room that offers the daily tournaments as well. No casino would want to deal with a company that can't provide a clear cut offer on what they planning to do even though they're interested in doing so, since government requires casinos to diversify the gaming services on offer they just choose to make a new version of baccarat instead.

There's a huge demand for lower limit games like 25-50 f.e together with weekend tournaments. That's how people get familiar with poker and the brand hence the influx of new money into the poker economy. As of this moment I'm fairly certain that we're not gonna be seeing Stars opening a room in Macau next year unfortunately. Few months ago i had a thought that making something like Poker King 2 movie would actually be great for the business from long term perspective. But with Asian way of thinking they would just aim for maximum profitability straight away hence what we saw with Jeju event.

I do wish them the best in their business obviously as any poker is better than none but at the same time i sincerely hope that they put more heart and money initially for the long term success of the brand.

OK then i agree with you as i don't know the new guys since i didn't bother to go to Red Dragon Jeju.

do you think it was sucess or not? I thought there was going to be a HUGE overlay because the GTD was quite high and the event was announce with like 2 weeks notice in the middle of the winter (i mean it's like 0c° right now in Jeju) but things turned out to be ok!

You're talking about demand for 25/50 cash games. I hear you. Back then i played a lot of 25/50 at Wynn and StarWorld. Those games were plagued by nitty old chinese. Games were super boring only 50/100 offered descent action.

Anyway as good old Adam Smith demand needs to meet supply and vice versa. and the problem is that pretty much all casino tried poker and quickly gave up. Grand Lisboa, old Lisboa later for a short lived joint venture with PKC, Galaxy, StarWorld, CoD, Grand Waldo ... pretty much everyone tried poker and gave up except MGM.

I'm not sure how you can package things and convince a casino to allocate some of its table cap to low stakes table of a game that is by itself earning little compared to other table games

Macau is hard for poker thats a reality. Let's hope the new owners manage at least to secure a stable tour in asia like EPT is in Europe. I'd sign up for an APPT in NagaWorld PP, another one in RW Sentosa SG, the return of APPT cebu in addition to APPT Manila, and an APPT in Vietnam (you'll probably agree with me that the poker boom in Vietnam was one of the few good news for Asian players in 2018).

Personally I think the event in Jeju was significantly overhyped and basically made the numbers only since it's the first event for Stars after a long break. As well as them "sponsoring" players from various private poker clubs/communities in China mainly.

One can never evade dem grandpas when offering 25/50 obviously but it will also attract a ton of recreational players/tourists that can not afford higher limits/time to wait for tables.

The problem with profitability of some poker rooms and the amount of money they can offer for "rent" usually lies in being massively overstaffed and paying a significantly higher salary to people (than they deserve) who basically doing nothing 90% of their work time. Poker King quite quickly realized that and removed 3 women sitting at their "private" cashier all day along with their new ****ty chip design that god knows who ordered and reverted back to using original Venetian chips.

A lot can be achieved if you have people passionate about their **** and have actual understanding of how players think, what they want and being able to balance it with company goals and objectives. As for me having traveled a large portion of my life around Asia, having resided in HK, I just don't feel like grinding the circuit anymore. Even though I know a few gold mine places for poker still Hence, I really just care how things are going in Macau these days.

As from casino standpoint they sometimes fail to realize that poker players presence for extended periods of time can make up for a good profit increase by default as at least half of them gamble quite heavily having the money concept removed from our genes from birth This can also be linked to same VIP card benefit scheme as they did in Galaxy for example and it was AMAZING for the game. A lot of stuff can be done, but unfortunately not getting paid to disclose all i have in my mind.

In the end of the day it all comes to correct marketing initially, hardcore experienced management in between and a creative approach to keep the players happy.

In Macau as it relates to poker

At the end of the day it all comes down to table caps.

Macau poker scene would look much different if poker tables did not count against table cap or they could go back to original ratio which was like 10 poker tables = 1 Bacc table or something like that.

Is there anywhere for a USD 2/5 NL rec player to play in Macau? There for one day, looking for limits of HKD 25/50 or lower. From reading the past few pages in the thread it sounds like the options are limited if any, and the best bet is Wynn Macau (as opposed to the Wynn on Cotai)? Also people mentioned the rake being high, what is the rake exactly? Also, the games are bad, just a lot of nitty play? Sorry if I'm rehashing questions, I read the past few pages but didn't seem to see a straightforward answer to this. I'll be there a few days before new years.

Also, what do the 500 and 250 caps referenced earlier mean?

when you'll be there it will be easy for you to review as a grand total of TWO casinos offer poker in Macau.
Macau is divided in 2. Macau "mainland" and "Cotai" where the new casino strip is located.
the two casinos offering poker are Wynn "mainland" (the cotai Wynn is called "Wynn Palace") which is ground zero for poker in Macau and PKC at the Venetian on Cotai.

was there a year ago. Wynn only had 25/50 (which is 3/6 USD) on rare occasions in week days with super long waiting lists. Not sure if they still offer it. not sure about V.

250/500 is a HKD sum refering to the rake. rake is 5% with a 250 HKD cap at the Wynn and 500 at the V. (but V might have aligned it with Wynn not sure).
note that it makes little sense to play 25/50 (aside from the HUGE waiting problem) because the same rake cap will apply to 50/100 (USD 6/12) and maybe even 100/200 (USD 12/24).

enjoy your first communism lesson, one rake fits all

someone might give you more up to date info, but as there are only two places you can review Macau poker scene yourself in less than an hour (taxi ride between the 2 places is less than 10 minutes)

Table caps have little to do with it, they dont even had/have enough dealers to fill the caps.

I do not agree that Macau is hard for poker it's more like they don't understand poker. They just treat it like a pit game.

I know more about poker then I do Macau and dont want to make bold statements about a place and culture where I have only spent 1-2 months, but I spent enough time there working in poker business to make this simple observation.

Table caps have everything to do with poker in Macau and manifests itself in several ways that make it difficult for the poker market there to grow beyond Wynn's higher limit business and Venetians medium limit business, like it has grown in other parts of the world.

One example of this is: No entry level, low limit games

In the USA (and many other parts of the world) 80%+ of cash games in poker rooms is US $1/$2 NLH. The lowest game in Macau is ~US $3/$6 and with limited supply of those tables, the lists for that can get ridiculously long in key times of the week.

$1/$2 is the game that most players want to play. You simply cannot grow a healthy poker market dealing only mid to high stakes games. You need the low stakes game to attract new players and to feed the other games. Its also where most of the volume is.

LIke you mention there are of course other issues that have nothing to do with table caps (cultural issues related to overall interest in game of poker, staffing like you mention), but table caps impacting ability to spread low stakes game is a major problem that will continue to make it difficult for the poker market there to grow.

Just woke up and for some reason remembered those electronic tables ages ago in COD when Stars room used to be on main gaming floor. They had a few of those and they spread 10-25 with higher cash games being run by live dealers.

Anybody got an insight on how government perceives those tables in relation to table cap? As they're considerably more efficient and cheaper to run though it does not provide the same type of experience. Will try to find out why Stars abandoned using them earlier.

Bringing those back is one of the options to consider to make Macau poker great again

And yeah. This statement sums up a lot.

e-tables did not count against table cap (they were deemed to be electronic gaming device by DICJ)

All things being equal, players prefer real cards and real chips so they struggled in Macau, in the same way they struggled in other parts of world where they were mixed in with live dealt games with dealers. In areas where live dealers are not allowed and etable is only option for Poker, they always did well for players and operators.

Pokerstars team did alot of great things for poker in the region at COD.

But, with or without etables, they struggled to get good cash game business going outside of the live MTT events.

speaking of Macau i'm surprised that, Party Poker that is trying to take over Live Poker worldwide never did an event in Macau.
WSOP also never tried.
at least WPT had a few minor events in the Asia but never did anything in Macau as far as I can remember.

^^

Things are just different in Macau.

In many large markets, someone like Party can show up, cut a deal with opoerator and schedule an event.

Not the case in Macau

It took the PokerStars team years of developing relationships and understanding how to do business there. It required quite of bit of hard work and boots on the ground.

the only gaming hub that serves 1,4 billion chinese people, and which also attracts 1,3 billion indians, 120 millions japanese (no casino in japan), 74 millions koreans (koreans can't enter to Koreans casino), and 70 millions thailand citizens, basically we're talking about a place that serves half of the world population... might be worth the extra effort

Serial,

I'd agree it is 100% worth the effort for anyone that wants to grow a poker brand in the region.

As a western business dude, I'll just say adjusting to Chinese business culture is not trivial. Its easy to fail (side note below)

I haven't been to Poker King club at Venetian. Is it successful? How many games do they have running on average? Has that number been the same, gone up, or gone down since opening?

Given the Poker King team's knowledge of BOTH poker and how to do business in Macau, if they cant grow the business at Venetian, and expand to another venue as well, then Poker in Macau just doesn't seem to be growable right now.

If true, that fact is still shocking to me as well given the mind boggling volume of gamblers that you mentioned cycle through Macau.


side note

Gary Loveman, ex Harrahs/Caesars CEO Harrah's should have been summarily fired after botching Macau. Venetian property and license should have been his. Rumor has it they didn't adjust to business norms there, offended local decision makers and so he ended up with a useless golf course instead of a casino.

Same as taking them years providing the most boring "educational" content via their coverage of live events talking about ranges, stack sizes, ICM, odds, blockers etc etc that makes the future Chris Moneymakers think like: "What the **** is this all about? I'd rather stick to my home game as I have no chance against these guys". Apparently government officials also think the same as a significant number of countries banned online poker in recent years.

Perhaps their plan was to kill two birds with one stone through that in achieving more or less breakeven expectation for 99% of players on the site and also popularize poker but if for example i knew absolutely nothing about it and someone asked me : "Hey, have you heard about poker? Should watch on Youtube and go play in Bahamas". I would be like yea, good luck bro.

Big kudos to Rob Yong, Matt Kirk, Leon and few guys from Triton for actually making the content that's fun to watch for the general public but the commentary really brings the value of that content to below 0.

It's successful on a small scale in terms of poker(due to max rake that is allowed by the government) and largely because of money laundering, hence it was the main reason it was created.

Number of tables would range from 2-3 at night to 7-8 which is about the max they want to open even though waiting lists during normal hours can get massive. Dozens of people come and give up getting a seat day in and day out hence the demand is shrinking.

It's just simply not their goal to expand the operation further even though it could be a thriving room just cause Venetian always had massive traffic of tourists.

PokerStars corp live streaming strategy was mainly focused on EPT. APPT was just emerging.

Hate to beat a dead horse, but live streaming and the approvals needed though not impossible to work around in Macau they were complex, time consuming and required a lot of Macau political know how.

I think you right though, if Stars had produced a successful Asian focused live stream product, it surely would have helped grow the market.

Yes the super deep waiting lists are frustrating there and turn off 1000's of new, potential players each year.

"want to" open is the wrong word.

"are allowed to" open is better.

Those peak times with 7-8 games going are the same time Venetian needs every single Bacc table avail. Plus peek times for dealers as well.

Poker King would love to open more tables. Their boss (the Venetian) simply wont let them.

Poker King should duplicate room in another casino that would allocate them some permanent tables. This would help ease the supply / demand problem in Macau.