Gambling in Macau on the cheap?

March 28, 2012 5:15 AM

I'm going to Macau and I'd like to see a few casinos and gamble a bit, but I'm also a poor student. What are the best games for me to play to get the most time and fun for my money, or to have the best odds of winning (impossible, I know)?
posted by reductiondesign to Travel & Transportation around Macau (10 answers total)

As a fellow poor student I find casinos utterly disspiriting miserable places. If you want to play table games, then blackjack and roulette are fairly straightforward ways of losing predictably and slowly. However, I would strongly recommend that you gamble at the race tracks. I've had great nights out both at Happy Valley in Hong Kong, and at dog tracks in the UK. It's just a better, more sociable way of gambling, with its own mystique. Lonely Planet readers seem to agree, rating the Canidrome is the second best thing to do in Macau after bungee jumping.
posted by roofus at 5:25 AM on March 28, 2012

The Rands in Repose Vegas System has a piece on gambling game selection that he says maximizes fun while playing games where you loose money at the slowest rate.
posted by mmascolino at 6:02 AM on March 28, 2012 [1 favorite]

If you're looking for low-stakes long-hour fun, play the big/small (dai/siu) bets at the sic bo tables. It's a dice game. Odds are essentially 49.9% for you to win (house wins if all three dice are the same). You can play a minimum bet of HK$100.

What's fascinating is the group dynamics that happen. Groups will get up and leave or swarm tables en masse, swarm tables that they believe the dice are going their way, and generally make a loud chaotic show.

Stay away from slots. They're soulless.
posted by Hollywood Upstairs Medical College at 6:17 AM on March 28, 2012

Sic bo
posted by Hollywood Upstairs Medical College at 6:17 AM on March 28, 2012

Seconding Rands in Repose, Pai Gow has never let me down in vegas. I can play for 4 hours with $50 (on the $5 maybe $10 tables).
posted by saradarlin at 6:28 AM on March 28, 2012

Skee ball.

Seriously. There's probably an arcade somewhere in the casino for kids who aren't old enough to gamble, and despite the propensity for some arcade games to "eat quarters", I think your ratio of money/fun will be much, much, much better than anything you'll find on the floor.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 7:24 AM on March 28, 2012

Seconding Pai Gow... You can usually play for a really long time without losing much. Plus, the dealer (and other players) will usually help you.
posted by jshort at 8:55 AM on March 28, 2012

I don't know if they have craps in Macau, but I've found that it has the best odds for slowly hemorrhaging (or even perhaps winning!). If you learn how to play the pass line and behind the pass line, you can get a lot of milage (and drinks!) out of fewer dollars. I've heard that playing behind the pass line has the best odds in the entire casino; incidentally it's the only unmarked bet in a casino.

Here's a decent primer on craps, with info on playing the pass line. The site also has a nifty Flash craps game too.
posted by slogger at 1:47 PM on March 28, 2012 [1 favorite]

I dunno if you're male or female, but when we were in Macau a few years ago, my non-gambling partner's favourite discovery and game was "hooker bingo". As a woman, she had not been approached by swarms of prostitutes the way that I was in some casinos(only some, the Venetian was particularly bad) , and was gob-smacked when I said "Man, I reckon 50% of the women under forty in here are prostitutes" (no exaggeration, it was insane).

This prompted her and our other female friend to go discreetly walk around trying to guess which casino patrons were prostitutes. I know that sounds really mean, but truly, it wasn't a judgment call - that's the thing, it was quite hard to tell unless you were a guy and they were trying to pick you up, so there is a strong element of chance. After a couple of hours they had effectively sussed out most of the professionals on the gaming floor, so then they started trailing them to see what the pick-up rate was like (very, very low, incidentally), and then realised that some worked in teams, there was one guy on the floor who was a pimp etc etc. Trailing is a lot easier than it sounds cause the casinos are packed full of people just aimlessly wandering around.

This whiled away hours of her time, and I think she enjoyed it nearly as much as I enjoyed watching my friend win then lose about twelve thousand dollars on blackjack tables (I bet a total of fifty bucks, and without him would have been crushingly bored).
posted by smoke at 3:05 PM on March 28, 2012

Yep, pai gow and very conservative betting in craps. Don't get all crazy on the craps bets-stick with pass and odds mainly-stay away from the field and hard way bets.
posted by purenitrous at 9:37 PM on March 29, 2012