In a 4th floor casino with no #8 seat, your chances of winning Asian gamblers are baccarat, or zero.

Knowing their gambling superstitions (like lucky numbers) and choice of casino games (like baccarat) is half the battle over Asian casino gamblers, the newest ‘it’ group this side of town. Whether immigrants or tourists, Asian gamblers have indeed become a segment no casino can afford to lose, from Las Vegas to Macau and Native American Indian casino gaming reservations.

Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun Resort and Casino, the world’s two largest casinos, are both Indian casinos situated in Connecticut. It is the wealthiest US state per capita, with a population that is predominantly white, at 76%. Only 3.2% are Asian American, yet this market is indispensable enough that both casinos send buses out to pick up Asians customers at the neighboring Chinatowns of Boston and New York.

Asian & Chinese Gambling Superstitions

Over 2,000 Asian Americans gamble daily at Mohegan Sun, or 20% of all customers, says VP Rocco Santoro. It is imperative that their casino dealers and floor supervisors, half of whom are Asian, be trained to be culturally correct. “For instance, when introducing oneself to an Asian player, the lower you bow, the more respect you show,” he says.

As for the numbers game, Santoro says Asians consider the number 4 as unlucky and the number 8 as lucky. For this reason, Mohegan Sun would include a No. 8 seat but skip a…

Read More » Baccarat, Other Secrets to Winning Asian Casino Gamblers (1 of 2)

Bodog.com’s Founder & CEO, Calvin Ayre knows using celebrities is a sure bet.

While hitching your brand to a celebrity star may be old hat in most industries, in the gambling world it is revolutionary.

Rocky Balboa Star and Philly’s adopted son Sylvester Stallone has joined the list of Hollywood stars who asked Pennsylvania state regulators for a casino license in Rocky’s hometown.

One of Stallone’s partners in Planet Hollywood International Inc., actor Bruce Willis, also recorded a video message to board members, promising that “you can expect to see me at the casino plenty.”

Casino marketing companies have found the benefits of including celebrities to their marketing list. The use of celebrities in land-based casinos can generate this already huge business into something even bigger.

Casinos are notorious for using huge marketing and people everywhere are excited to see what casino’s will do next.

The interest in marketing that online casinos have is the fact that it has done so much for the online casinos that have been using it since they were established. The financial benefits of such a thing are huge in numbers and people have obviously responded to celebrity advertising in different industries.

Gambling and celebrities have been intertwined for decades. Statistics will show what it has meant for the different units of the gaming industry including casino, poker and bingo as well as…

Read More » Casino hopefuls depend on Hollywood stars to get gambling license

Mahjong. Mahjongg. Majiang. Mah-jong. Mah-jongg. If names are any indication, this game is as variated as it gets.

The game of Mahjong is played with differing rules, scoring system, and number of tiles – depending on where you’re at. This is part of the reason mahjong isn’t taking off globally like another Asian gambling favorite, baccarat. China in 1998 created international tournament rules in an attempt to standardize the game, but regional variations are too deeply entrenched to be replaced by the tournament version.

On the upside, the many variants of mahjong are a draw to serious gamblers. From Las Vegas to Macau to Russia to Britain, the game offers a good challenge to those in search of locally flavored casinos and gambling games. Even James Bond, most associated with baccarat, plays Mahjong in the Raymond Benson novel, Zero Minus Ten.

The oldest known form originated in China, its earliest evidence dating back to the Taiping Dynasty in the 1800s. The most common variation, Hong Kong Mahjong or Cantonese Mahjong, is only slightly different than Classical Chinese Mahjong.

Japanese Mahjong is mostly played in special Mahjong arcade machines; Nintendo made Mahjong sets first and computer games later. American Mahjong differs the most from Classical Chinese, and is widely a Jewish social game. Other known versions are…

Read More » Know Your Asian: The Casino Game of Mahjong

November first. Day of the Dead in Mexico, death day at Stardust Las Vegas Resort & Casino.

This is the day some observe All Souls’ Day, others, Día de los Muertos. In Las Vegas, it is the day Stardust sees its dreariest, gloomiest Halloween: the calendar date when the casino hotel, after operating for close to 60 years, is scheduled to stop taking all reservations, carrying on with prior commitments until imploded early next year. Stardust is ghost-like from here; it’s the beginning of the end.

Was that name doomed from the start? What games of chance will be lost to us, now that owner Boyd Gaming is gambling away this Las Vegas institution in favor of a new $4 billion megaresort befitting the Strip?

Bustling and spread out across the ground floor, Stardust Casino is no doubt the highest-traffic area at the hotel. Other than convention spaces bringing equally steady business, the gaming spaces teem with the most customers. People saunter nonstop on the red carpet, and you wonder how, within 85,000 sqft; the new Echelon Place replacing Stardust will offer a 140,000 sqft casino.

A thing of note about Stardust Casino is, many say, its gamblers look more Downtown than Strip. As far back as I can remember, the most I see here are over-45 geezers…

Read More » Stardust Las Vegas Casino Goes Dark on Halloween

Irony: Macau gambling will surpass Las Vegas, thanks to Las Vegas investors in Macau.

News has floated all year that Macau will overtake Las Vegas in gambling revenue by 2007. What does not enjoy as much spotlight is that Las Vegas casino gambling investors themselves are causing much of this income boost. Local China-based casino operators are not about to sit back; raising the stakes with new casino developments of their own, like the new StarWorld casino hotel, a new game is on.

Macau is the newest darling of casino gamblers. It is a fast-rising hotspot for Asian highrollers’ favorite game of baccarat, the most popular gambling game in the region. Gamblers are additionally drawn to Macau casinos for the tourist novelty of its homegrown gambling games like fantan and daisiu – the thinking is you will find Las Vegas games in Macau but you won’t find Macau games in Las Vegas.

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A spike in gambling earnings started to show in Macau in 2001, when casino licenses were first offered to foreign casino operators. Among them have been Las Vegas investors Sheldon Adelson, with his Sands Macau, and Steve Wynn, with his Wynn Resorts…

Read More » Macau Casinos Like StarWorld Challenge Las Vegas Invasion

Macau is so hot a gambling capital that it keeps breaking records, of others and its own.

Months into forecasts that Macau will overtake Las Vegas in casino gaming, Macau continues to climb steadily and narrow the gap between itself and Las Vegas. China’s baccarat gaming capital recently saw an over 12% annual increase in gambling and betting revenue, shattering a previous record it set only a while back.

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The so-called Las Vegas of Asia recorded a year-on-year hike of 12.6% in August in gross receipts from the gambling and betting industry, which amounted to $4.34 billion for 2006’s first eight months. This, according to the government-run Statistics and Census Service (SCS). Macau recorded $584 million in gaming gross receipts for August alone, breaking a record of $578 million it set last March, says SCS.

Since the middle of the year, analysts have been going on record to predict that Macau will leapfrog Las Vegas as the world’s top gambling destination by 2007…

Read More » Baccarat Capital Macau Closing in on Vegas

If you like all those Hentai stuff, and you love playing Baccarat, then iFaFa is for you.

What is iFaFa? It is an live online casino site positioned to be the largest Live Baccarat Room online casino that features real time sexy Asian casino dealers that you’ll probably drool over.

iFaFa is combining broadcasting quality that can rival all those ESPN programs you’ve been watching with probably the most-popular Asian casino game of all-time. Yep, I’m talking about Baccarat.

If you love Baccarat you’ll love iFaFa because the site delivers one of the most exciting live online casino gaming experience there is. Top it off with cute little Asian hotties dressed in those cute dealer outfits then you just know you have a winner right there.

And yep, no shortcuts have been made to ensure the authenticity of these live baccarat games via online video.

Baccarat is an Italian reference to ‘’zero.'’ The classy-sounding moniker and allusions to high-style, tuxedoed James Bond types is no coincidence, baccarat is believed to have originated in Italy shortly before the turn of the 16th century, and had been claimed by the…

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Macau is the new Las Vegas. Craig is the new Bond. Baccarat has got it coming.

If we are to believe current trends in gambling pop culture, the game of baccarat may soon be dealing with its own version of poker celebrities, complete with groupies, poseurs, and namedroppers.

On film, the latest remake of Casino Royale has Daniel Craig playing 007 against Mars Mikkelsen as arch-nemesis Le Chiffre – the name clearly a play on Baccarat Chemin de Fer, Bond’s favored game. Mikkelsen, a star in his native Denmark, where he so much as got voted ‘Sexiest Man’, can hope to collect non-Nordic fans with this choice role.

(If you went to see Clive Owen – who had been a fan favorite for the part Craig snagged – in Antoine Fuqua’s King Arthur, Mikkelsen would be the dude who plays Tristan, aka the one with the raven.)

Casino Royale’s ‘top secret’ PR maneuvers notwithstanding, Ian Fleming’s first Bond novel, from where it is adapted, has the British Bond outbetting the Russian Le Chiffre in a game of Baccarat Banque. If you don’t already know, the movie ditches the lesser known baccarat in favor of the better known poker, which is silly unless Mikkelsen’s character is named 7 Card Stud, but okay. In any case, producers will want people talking about that face-off; we expect repeated mentions of baccarat and all of the above a-pain-to-enunciate jargon.

In real life, Macau presently boasts the world’s most number of…

Read More » Is Baccarat the New Poker?

Don’t ask me, I dunno either.

In a move that caught everyone off-guard, the US Senate passed the controversial Anti-Online Gambling Bill, with a shady backdoor deal on the side.

In a Congressional back room deal, opponents of Internet gambling have added language to port security legislation that would prohibit online wagering.

Yeah, the bill was tied to an unrelated port security bill. So opponents will have no choice but to pass it since we are now talking about national security. Call me stupid but really I don’t get it.

Anyway, the main meat of the bill that is sure to be signed into law by the embattled President George Bush, is preventing the transfer of funds into online gambling accounts.

Banks are now required to monitor transactions, and deny any transactions from payment providers for online gaming. There is already much debate over whether third party processors, such as NETeller will be affected, PokerNews reported.

Of course we all know that the sudden speed of passing this bill has much to do with the coming mid-term elections. What with all the Iraq war scandal, Mark Foley’s homo-erotic emails with a teenage congressional page, and Republicans feeling the heat of losing majority in both houses.

There has to be some sacrificial offering to appease their fanbase. The question is will it work?

Will millions of Americans today hooked on online gaming, especially online poker, the politicians are sure to lose votes with…

Read More » Anti-Online Gambling Bill Passed As Security Measure.

A Powerball ticket sold at an Iowa convenience store is worth $200 million, Iowa Lottery officials said.

The winning ticket was sold at a Kum & Go in Fort Dodge, about 70 miles northwest of Des Moines. About 499 of these somewhat valuable Powerball tickets were sold at the store for drawing, well, that is according to Iowa Lottery spokeswoman Mary Neubauer.

The winner has not yet come forward.

The prize, if taken in payments over 30 years, would be $140.5 million after taxes, Neubauer said. She also said that the lump sum payment would yield a check of $67.1 million after taxes.

An assistant manager at the convenience store was shocked to hear the winning ticket was sold at her store.

‘’I've got goose bumps,'’ Robin Graves said in a statement. The Kum & Go chain will get a $10,000 bonus for selling the winning ticket.

The winning numbers, 13 21 26 45 50 and Powerball 20, were computer picked, said the Iowa Lottery Spokeswoman.

The jackpot was the 13th won at more than $200 million in the…

Read More » Iowa Store Produced $200 M Powerball Ticket