Golden. Many well known ones seem to be permanently shut (Rio, East, Darling 2) Surprised me because I would have thought that kind of thing would be back up and running before any of the other leisure stuff.

Wasn't in love with the live games in Manila, too many nits, but imagine PP or Vietnam would be significantly better.

How are NLHE games in macau rn?

Don’t think so. Has been virtually impossible to get into macau and a friend living there said 2 weeks ago rooms were still closed

3 handed with high rake.

Grandpas in BDSM costumes sitting, folding to each other? At some point next year will check out personally to see if any improvement and try to get some inside info if any of the old managers are still around.

Missing Florida cash games though. Was a good year for work and pokerwise.

yeah but is there even an official poker room now or just makeshift tables on the main floor? also theyre just getting the covid big surge that everywhere else had 12 months ago right, as in everyone is having it or something like that?

Macau is the same as the mainland regarding covid, they had very similar policies too. Presumably the cases are very elevated at the moment but nobody knows exactly as you can never trust any official numbers. If you are scared of covid you might want to wait a bit. Not sure but prolly same as HK, very nazi mask policies still. I will go on a weekend trip when the hookers are back lol so that I have something to do in case the poker's crap as it was before covid.

When were you last playing in Macau? In earlier years, yes. Maybe at higher stakes they were still soft, dunno. The 25/50, 50/100 usually consisted of 6-7 mostly European pros and maybe 1-2 weaker players which were not necessarily big spots either. Sometimes you had one, usually mainland Chinese or Indian punter, that's what the whole game thrived of. Very sad scene actually. And still all the places got successively replaced by Baccarat tables, even before Covid everything was closed. The tourneys were better as long as they were still running in CoD, but that got cancelled in 2018? too. Pretty much every place had way better games than Macau, Manila, Saigon, Phnom Penh. That was the state in 2018/19 but maybe it will get better now, obv all the pros must have left.

Well depends on what's running in macau, is there an official room now?

Re: Macau games, by US standards they're always gonna be nittier in comparison, and take into account the high rake, harder to beat at lower stakes hence 25/50 hkd ie $3.5/7 USD basically disappeared over the years. Plus the poker rooms in the past don't want you to play small cos they were often run by a VIP club eg Poker King leasing Venetian space, often had to share rake intake with the casino.

So to expect small stakes soft games in macau upon reopening would be unrealistic imo.

Also during the pandemic Suncity and other VIP clubs were shut and management arrested in some cases by China, so since the bigger games revolved around VIP punters crossing over to poker, without that clientele it'd be interesting to see how the high stakes games are once China gets over the covid stuff..

Just to clarify as we've had conflicting info. Are you in Macau now, or were recently, and are the Wynn/Venetian rooms open?

Thanks.

Wynn has never had rake less than 200hkd cap and since ~2017 it raised the rake to 250 with management then still kept saying they were making a loss on that rake(or that they could afford to raise rake since their only competition was raking 500hkd). They also haven't had 25/50 since that time

So you're telling me after losing billions of dollars for 3 years due to locked borders and lockdown and having the poker room permanently shut by all accounts, now they just reopened the room and decided to half the rake and bring back low stakes that's a loss-maker for them that they haven't had in 7 years??

If true, that would be the most absurd thing related to macau poker I've ever heard.. if true.

That was for 9-handed also, I think the increase from 200 to 250 happened a bit later in 2018ish but maybe I'm wrong, aside from that 663366 is basically correct. Also there were no games in end of 2019, at least no public ones, all the last poker rooms shut down in 2019 incl. the Wynn

You mean like Feb 2020 when covid shut it down but yes.

My bad, yes I got that timeline wrong. I looked it up, every other room shut before but wynn (mainland side) and venetian were running until covid struck. Also the rake increase was in early 2019. 125 would be more than welcome obv but yes, I believe it when I see it

OK i deleted several posts for insults and name calling. Also I have had multiple sources tell me that certain rooms and games described are not actually running at this time, so I deleted those posts as well. And as a reminder, this is not the type of thread to question or comment on a particular posters poker results. It's for providing accurate info about the Macau games.

If you have any questions or wish to discuss this further pls move your comments to the moderation discussion thread.

Anyone currently at Macau playing poker? Just heard Wynn is "almost" back to normal

are there are recs and tourists playing though?





also, on another note, alec torelli came up in the "where are they now thread" and I'm curious if any of you guys ever saw him playing there, he always said he played there a lot

I never saw him, but I wasn't a regular fixture only there on and off for a month or so - so me never seeing him is far from a reliable indicator he exaggerated his presence there

Yea, he played. The games were slowly drying up already during that period so most of the time he spent on marginally winning autopilot in mid stakes ruminating about marketing strategies and getting local "children" excited about his poker coaching. It did somewhat work, so good for him.

Yeah, he was there, saw him a couple of times, and I wasn't a reg there either, just there occasionally on WE trips from HK, so yes, he played there and higher than 50/100 IIRC.
I would assume the games now are as good as they ever will be as it will take some time for everything to recalibrate and CNY is also. But just a wild guess on my part. Hotel prices probably through the roof too though, but might be worth a trip if you have the time...

Personally, I would say that if the rumors are somewhat true about Wynn currently, if they indeed opened one or a couple of 50-100 tables or similar stakes. You will be "greeted" by a bunch of thirsty "secret handshaking grandpas" that will soft play each other to death to feed on any minimal external "juice" that gets introduced.

Historically, all the proper balanced somewhat juicy mid stakes have always been over on Taipa side due to many reasons. Wynn was not a venue notorious for accommodating stakes that general population could afford to lose.

With Chinese economy leading the global recovery now and Covid bullshit slowly starts to fade things can improve reasonably fast though. But the timeline on whole poker situation "recovery" will depend on so many variables ranging from (any funky new government regulations introduced, visions of casino operators for the business after getting licenses renewed, economy, ease of travel, word of mouth which takes a lot time, etc, etc)

Imo, at this particular moment, regardless of CNY or even a worldwide celebration of people colonizing Mars not really gonna make any difference. Things take time to get back to "normal" ways. Could drive on Sunday to check wtf is going on but rather spend time chilling with family to be honest because the times been plentiful that in the past me being "excited" about something proved a waste of time similar to initial expectations based on experience.

I do get a hard-on fantasizing about Galaxy opening a poker room back again though. But gotta be realistic....

^ "Chinese economy leading global recovery"

Lol, you can't be serious right?

The theme of business in Asia the past 3 years has been 1) all foreign companies either completely or partially pulling out of China towards mostly southeast Asia but also Taiwan, Singapore etc away from China, and 2) Chinese themselves corporate and individual sending money out of China ASAP to such an extent that CCP literally made it criminal for anyone to send any meaningful amount out of the country

Chinese stocks are experiencing a bounce now, only after 3 years of nonstop down down and more down...

China may eventually come back, but economically it's def not leading anybody. China literally just posted the worst economic stats in 50 years too, and the problems go a lot deeper than simple lockdowns... aging population, supply chain chaos, rising wages, internatonal political headwinds.. issues too many to mention

FYI I'm not anti-China, this is a macau thread and for macau's sake it needs a prospering China.. ;-)

I wouldn't write my opinion if I wasn't serious.

By far not an expert but few things are quite factual to support my statement.

-Inflation amongst well-developed economies at lowest rate
-Food and energy security given the geo-political situation secured for years
-Foreign companies exiting the market do not affect the local indexes cumulative performance which is the highest worldwide entering 2023. They've been long replaced with local competitors waiting to get a bigger slice like BYD etc.
-Ageing population here is largely mitigated by that same 65+ population still contributing to workforce like nowhere else

The main point for the "leading" term that I've used is energy and food security that in whatever short-mid term will be provided by Russia at discount price. There can be some problems with the economy per se based underlying main factors. But as long as same "foreign companies/entities" invest in it when they see value it doesn't really matter.

bunch off free money waiting in Wynn brah! assuming u got your sizes and everything on point?

Love this Macau excitement you have. Reminds me of when I first started going there long time ago.