Macau is become more famous by the day; this Chinese Island City is the only legal jurisdiction for gambling for the whole of mainland China. As the Asian race loves a flutter traditionally, Macau sees millions of visitors, who come just for the gambling, but not only from Mainland China. The growth of the gambling industry on this previous Portuguese colony is so huge that both the Macau and Chinese Governments have had to put measures in place to create a position of negative growth. They have done this by no longer selling land to gambling concerns, this has to be put out to Government Tender, and they have restricted visa applications from mainland China. This has not stopped growth however, and Macau has also become famous for local nosebleed poker games. The spend in this remarkable gambling game Mecca is $4 to every $1 spent in Las Vegas.
Needless to say Macau attracts many poker players and it is a stop on the PokerStars Tournament schedule. The schedule has been announced for this year and it gets underway on February 21st, 2011. The tournament made its debut five years ago at the Grand Lisboa Casino Bet and took the form of a no-limit Texas Hold ‘em. This made the Grand Lisboa Casino a World-leader in poker provision and they are home to the largest poker room in the whole of Continental Asia.
The first event to get underway will be the Macau Poker Cup which is played in Hong Kong Dollars, with buy-in of HKD $1,000. This is a charity event so the buy-in is pretty low if you compare it to the main even – the Red Dragon Main Event and a buy-in which has been increased to HKD $11,000. The fact that there is a guaranteed prize pot of HKD $3 million justifies the huge size of the buy-in. Thereafter the Macau Millions kicks off in April, with the Macau Poker Cup Finale taking place during October. The last poker event held this year in Macau is the November scheduled, Asia Pacific Poker Tour Macau which returns for its 5th installment.
John Juanda, Tom “Durrr” Dwan and Phil Ivey are some of the poker pros expected to appear in these tournaments and they are in fact responsible to a degree for the state of high stakes games in Macau – their high stakes gambling drives up the price. However when it comes to the true nosebleed poker games, these are generally requested and organized by local and visiting businessmen; poker pros actually have a hard time getting into these games.
The February launch of the Macau Poker Cup will be introducing a few subtle changes, although it is still a no-limit Texas Hold ‘em event. Macau, being what it is, these changes will see even richer events taking place in order to cater for the large stacks of many Asian Players. They are looking at a starting stack of something like HKD $15,000, Asian poker players have increasingly sophisticated tastes in the nosebleed poker genre.