The opening of the Venetian Macao today raises the stakes in a bold bet made five years ago. Macau is now the world's biggest casino centre and the action has reached the point of no return. The Venetian is the world's biggest casino and cost US$2.4 billion to build - more than the former Portuguese enclave's public works spending over the past five years - and is an apt metaphor for where casinos stand in the local economy.
Macau's future rests on the tables spread throughout the city, that were introduced on the back of the liberalisation of its gambling market. When the Las Vegas bosses were invited to play against local casino king Stanley Ho Hung-sun in 2002, few people realised then just how big a bet had been placed on the city's future.
The 2004 launch of Sands Macau, built by the Venetian Macao's owner, Las Vegas Sands, heralded a big change in the former colonial backwater.
'We have been herded onto a fast train. We don't know where it's going and we're not allowed to get off,' said political commentator Larry So Man-yum.
In less than three years, Macau has overtaken the Las Vegas Strip as the world's most lucrative gambling market. Casino-derived wealth even saw the city's GDP per capita eclipse that of Hong Kong last year.
The Venetian is 10 times the size of Sands. Every day about 15,000 people, or about 5 per cent of the labour force, will be working inside the behemoth, which boasts more than 111,000 square metres of convention space alone. The world's biggest casino has 850 gaming tables and 4,100 slot machines on floors the size of three soccer pitches.