Gambling and superstition

In 2007 Macao officially surpassed Vegas as the place with the highest turnover in gambling.
Macao is not larger then Vegas yet but there's more money spend already.... so in other words, the average Chinese gambler spends way more in a casino! Macau is a 30 minute boat trip from Hong Kong:


Macao is very different form Vegas. The most important games played in Macao are different from Vegas (Baccarat vs Roulette and BlackJack) and also the behaviour of the gamblers themselves is very different. A good example is the superstitious rituals of Chinese Baccarat players. Baccarat is the game of choice for most players from Hong Kong and mainland China. The majority of gamblers in Macau are Baccarat players, so everything they do is very present in all casinos in China. These Baccarat players bring to the tables some strange, superstitious, and sometimes funny rituals that you will not see in any casino in Vegas.

Let´s say you enter a casino in Macau and you go to the first Baccarat table you can find to check out how the game is played. Guaranteed you'll see Chinese gamblers squeezing the cads between their fingers, very slowly peeking at the cards by lifting the vertical end just enough to see the number and suit, then turning it horizontally and peeking the number again. Many of them even squeeze the cards and therefore rendering them unusable for another round (casinos at Macau seems to be OK with this, wonder if they make enough profit for a new deck every round ). Soon, you will find yourself wondering why they behave the way they do. Well, that is because this ritual dance, this slow peeking, creasing and then peeking again is meant to increase the suspense and thus create extra time for a good pair of cards to appear (a good combination close to the magic number).

But that's not all, you will also see some players even blowing on the cards, in the hope they are "blowing away" bad numbers. The thing is that they do it so seriously, so focused, that you almost start believing they can actually change the outcome of a card by squeezing or blowing. It might even make you superstitious as well!
According to Ray Rody, a gaming professor at Macau Millennium College for studies about the cultural history of gambling, almost all Chinese players are superstitious and this is the most obvious at the Baccarat tables. In Baccarat one player is dealt and then other gamblers at the table can choose to bet with or against that player. Chinese gamblers tend to look for a player with three or four straight wins for the banker or player and then bet for this result to repeat. So these gamblers are walking around the casino looking for a table showing a trend. In fact, some casinos installed monitors showing the trends in Baccarat tables. If a trend appears on one of the tables... you can expect a crowd there!

Some statistics about Baccarat

* Baccarat is responsible for about 86% Macau´s total gaming revenues ($11.8 Billions)
* Is considered one of the games with best odds (-1.06% in banker bet and -1.24% in player bet)
* Some casinos have around their 70% of floor space dedicated to Baccarat.
* There are some very high stakes VIP tables, where is not unusual to see a player win or loose $7 to $10 Million a day



And if you can´t go to Macau rigth now, there's always the chance to play the Baccarat game in an online casino;
We like online Baccarat offered by:
Titan Casino
Crazy Vegas Casino
LuckyAce Casino
Europa Casino

Enjoy!


CasinoInfo team