The Poker Scene in Macau

Hello, friends.  Long time, no blog.  Let's change that.  Now's as good of time as any.

Currently, I'm on a 5-week journey in China.  I spent 4 weeks in Shanghai for work, and this week I'm traveling to Macau, Hong Kong, and  Beijing.

I thought I'd write to you about a place that I'd heard a lot about, and that I had wildly anticipated visiting, which is Macau.  Macau is a SAR (Special Administrative Region) of China, and it is about an hour by speed ferry from Hong Kong.  It is a gambling Mecca similar to Las Vegas, but in the Eastern Hemisphere.  It was formerly a Portuguese colony, and was turned over by Portugal to the Chinese government in 1999, two years after Hong Kong was turned over by the British.  They drive on the left side of the road.  Cabs are cheap.  The people are pretty.

I was most excited about the poker parts, but I did manage to slip in several miles of walking each day around the area, and I'm glad that I did.  I saw the Ruins of St. Paul, the Gaia Fortress and Lighthouse, and some very beautiful park areas.

What I came for, though, was the poker.  So I thought I'd let you know about the scene there for the curious.

Currency
First off, there are 8 Hong Kong Dollars (HKD) to an American Dollar.  So, a 25/50 game is about the equivalent to a 3/6 game in the United States, which is about three times higher than I am used to playing the USA.  I basically found an appropriate buy-in (about 2500 Hong Kong dollars for a 25/50 game), and then attempted to play based upon the chip values like I would in a tournament, but I found myself constantly doing conversions to American Dollars in my head.  This made me very uncomfortable, unfortunately, as I already felt I was playing a bit too high, but didn't want to have come all that way and not play.

Where Poker is Offered
As far as I could tell, there aren't too many casinos that offer it in the area.

I visited the Wynn, one of the newer casinos in the northern area of Macau, and there were quite a few games going, but the lowest blind game was 50/100, which was out of my league.

The Galaxy Starworld, very close to the Wynn, had the most active room.  It is where the Asian millionaires game in which Tom Dwan and Phil Ivey play on occasion.  I was able to stand about 10 feet away to watch the game, where I could see huge stacks of tiles the equivalent of about $10,000 each, in front of many of the players.  The more down-to-earth games started at 25/50, and this is where I decided to play for about 11 hours over the weekend.

Lastly, the Venetian, which is on Taipa (the southern part of the area, across 2 large bridges from Macau) on the Cotai Stip (an area built-up on what was formerly sea using massive land dumps and reclamation), had a room with only one table going on Monday, and that was a 50/100.  They did have a zero-person waiting list for 25/50, so it is something they offer (unlike the Wynn), but there was no interest.

The Long Waits
All of the rooms are quite small by American standards, and combined with the large demand, the waiting time is huge.  In the USA, I've never had to wait more than 3 hours that I can remember.  On day 1, I put my name on the list at 5:30 PM, and I didn't get a seat at table 8 until midnight.  I figured this would be the case, as I was about number 50 on the list with seemingly no turnover, so I went out and walked around the town a bit, but that is pretty ridiculous.

Smoking
Are you used to American poker rooms with no smoking?  So am I.  Most of the rooms had smoking allowed (except for the table that I luckily got both days, which is table 8 at Starworld).  You can request to move, but it really made me long for smoke-free rooms like I'm used to.

The Rake
This was a killer, and one that I wished I would have researched a bit more before coming.  In American rooms, a typical room will be about 5% of the pot up to $4-7.  At Starworld, it was 5% up to 200 HKD, which is $25!!!  The Venetian's is all the way up to 250 HKD.

Language
"English only at the table, please" is never something you'll hear in Macau.  The signs say, "Only Cantonese, Mandarin, and English are allowed."  Wow, that really limits things down!  About half of the people spoke English at least moderately well, but my opponents all knew that I couldn't speak Chinese, so they could talk with each other out loud about what I might have, and I wouldn't be able to stop it.  The good news is that I could ask for the size of the bet in English, and I didn't have to learn the Cantonese (along with English, the official languages of the region) words for raise, call, fold, or check.

How I Was Treated
For the most part, I wasn't too much of an outcast being a European-looking person in Macau.  I definitely was in the minority, though.  There were lots of Japanese and Korean people (i.e. other Asians), but probably less than 2% of the people in the room looked like me.  Some people targeted me for that reason, as Asians are notorious for their aggressive play, and one guy in particular was definitely gunning for me.  On day 2, on Sunday afternoon, it was a rather boisterous game with lots of English spoken (probably because the Asians couldn't understand each other in their respective native tongues), and I felt significantly less comfortable than I did the day before.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to really let my true, talkative, ridiculous personality come out.  I simply wasn't feeling that kind of positive energy like I do back home.  I tried to be my usual, friendly self, but it simply wasn't reciprocated much.

Pace of the Game
I felt that the play was much better quality than my 1/2 game back in Milwaukee, and the players were quite a bit better, on average.  Instead of 2 or 3 fish at the table, there usually was only 1.  This is not good for winning.  Also, the play was a bit tighter than what I was used to in the USA.

The Results
This was the unfortunate part.  I'm used to winning in poker.  I was hoping that the skills that help me beat the game in Milwaukee would translate.  This was a miscalculation.  Between the currency translations, playing higher than my comfort level, the general atmosphere toward me as an American, the better skill of my opponents, the huge rake, and no premium hands other than quad-3s once in 11 hours, I wasn't able to get anything going.  My Asian poker adventure ended disappointingly in a loss.  I was never up more than about 300 HKD, which is nothing.

Going Forward
Between the long waits, the high rake, the better skill, and the higher stakes, I'd say it is unlikely that I'll return anytime soon. I can easily find much, much softer games in my home town or in Las Vegas.  I would have loved to have seen Tom Dwan or Phil Ivey playing in the game, though, and that might be enough to get me to return.

I'm very glad I went, despite the somewhat negative tone in this post.  I learned a lot about inter-personal dynamics, and about some of my weaknesses while playing poker.  Until next time...

-Alan