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Two table games and special events draw Asian patrons
February 22, 2009
Table games have brought all kinds of new visitors to the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, and that includes a demographic casinos covet.
Asian gamblers.
"Asians have a high gaming profile, no question about it," says Thomas Lim, an expert on Asian gamblers based in Las Vegas.
On Chinese New Year, paper lanterns with the Chinese script for "good luck" dangled around the Pai Gow poker tables at the Hard Rock. The casino invited several hundred Asian patrons to a New Year's dinner and followed a Chinese custom by giving them red "lucky money" envelopes with new $5 bills.
And twice during the Jan. 30 celebration, dancers in yellow dragon costumes paraded through the casino, accompanied by drums, cymbals and a gong.
David Tran, 32, who runs a nail salon in Fort Lauderdale and often bets $300 a hand in mini-baccarat, left the table to watch the parade. "It's nice that the casino acknowledges the New Year, but then, they treat me right whenever I show up," Tran says. "I spend a lot of money here."
$50 a hand
Asians comprise only 2 percent of the South Florida population, according to the U.S. Census, but at the mini-baccarat and Pai Gow poker tables, it's often 100 percent. Most of the players are Chinese, with some Vietnamese, according to the Hard Rock.
When the Hard Rock rolled out blackjack last summer, it also put in baccarat (and a simpler version called mini-baccarat) and Pai Gow poker. Pai Gow poker combines Chinese dominoes and poker, with players forming two hands out of their seven cards. Baccarat and mini-baccarat pit the player vs. the house in an attempt to reach a total value of nine.
"If you're trying to get Asians to play, those are the right two games to put in," says Lim, who wrote an article for Global Gaming Business last month, titled "7 Steps to More Asian Business."
The Hard Rock recently expanded from four mini-baccarat tables to seven, even though the required bet is at least $50. Mini-baccarat tables seat nine players, instead of baccarat's normal 12, and on most nights there are up to 100 Asians combined at Hard Rock tables.
Numerology
Winnie Tang, president of the South Florida chapter of the Organization of Chinese Americans, says she, like many other Asians, grew up playing blackjack and mahjong, though not for money.
"The games themselves are fun to play," she says.
Asians are comfortable with the math and numerology behind the games, she says. Chinese consider the number 8, for example, extremely lucky (remember that last year's Summer Olympics began on 8-8-08), but the Mandarin and Cantonese spoken word for 4 is a homonym for the word for death, and is avoided.
To that end, baccarat tables don't have a seat No. 4 or 14, and casino staff members are taught Asian taboos, such as touching a gambler on the shoulder.
The Hard Rock, like other casinos, hired a Chinese-American and a Vietnamese-American host to make its patrons are comfortable, Seminole spokesman Gary Bitner says. Most patrons are locals, not tourists, he says.
"All in all, the Asian market is a good part of our business," he says.
About 80 percent of Las Vegas' biggest gamblers — "whales," in casino lingo — are Asian, gambling experts say. Most are baccarat players from China.
"The casinos have Asian furniture and are a lot more culturally competent than many of our hospitals," says Kent Woo, executive director of a San Francisco group operating a Chinese-language gambling addiction hot line. "It's funny, but it's true."
Woo says he feels casinos exploit Asians and cites higher rates of problem gambling among Asians than other groups.
In Florida, Tang helped the Florida Council on Compulsive Gambling publish its one-page help line information sheet in Chinese.
"There are some players that get in so far they can't get out, and that can cause family hardships," Tang says. "But everything has some good and some bad." |
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发表于 2009-2-23 00:48
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