MACAU (AP) — In the nearly three dozen casinos in Macau, the world's biggest gambling market, there's only one game that matters: baccarat.
Almost all of Macau's $38 billion in gambling revenue last year — six times more than the Las Vegas Strip — came from card game, much of it from Chinese high-rollers betting borrowed money and dwarfing the takings from slots, blackjack or roulette. Wherever you go in the former Portuguese colony, you'll see chain-smoking Chinese gamblers crowded around baccarat tables as players peel back their cards, hoping their luck will give them a good hand.
James Bond's favorite game is overshadowed by blackjack and poker in Las Vegas but the preferences of wealthy Chinese gamblers is changing that, and casinos there have been adding more tables to attract them.
"Baccarat is simple and it offers the opportunity to win big or lose big," said Zhong Jun-hei, a business owner from eastern Jiangxi province on one of his frequent visits to Macau, a tiny self-governing Chinese region on the country's southern coast. "I'll know right away if I put all my money down — in one hand I'll know if I win or lose," he said as he chewed on a fried chicken wing in a food court before a night of wagering at the Galaxy casino-resort in the city's Cotai Strip district.
Zhong and other Chinese gamblers said they like baccarat because it's easy to understand, not too heavily weighted in favor of the casino and exciting to play. Lucky rituals also add to the appeal for mainland Chinese gamblers, most of whom believe winning is more a result of fate than skill.
Their tastes help explain how Macau has risen from a forgotten ex-colonial outpost into a glittering boomtown enclave in the space of a decade. With a propensity to gamble and rising incomes thanks to red-hot economic growth, newly wealthy mainland Chinese have been flooding into Macau, the only place in China where gambling is permitted.