New Poker King Club Opens At The Venetian Macau

The Poker King Club (PKC), famous for hosting Macau’s Big Game, moved from the StarWorld Casino last September to a brand new location inside The Venetian Macau. However, the brand was given a temporary space until a spectacular new dedicated poker room was ready to open. On May 22th, the full time poker finally opened to great fanfare with more than one hundred distinguished guests attending its launch, including Poker King Club President Winfred Yu, Suncity Group President of Marketing Strategy YM Choong, Venetian & Plaza Operations Director Ciaran Carruthers, and Venetian Macau Limited VP of Casino Operations Harold Tsakmaklis.
Also in attendance at the opening ceremony was a number of top poker pros, including Phil Ivey, Johnny Chan, and Tom Dwan, who the Poker King Club hired to help promote the game to a mass market, and ultimately grow poker in Macau. Interestingly, the Venetian Macau is also owned by a subsidiary of Las Vegas Sands, whose CEO Sheldon Adelson is one of the USA’s leading campaigners against online poker.
As a rule, poker compares unfavorably to other casino gambling games in terms of its relatively slow speed and the revenues generated from the game. However, the game is also viewed as an important way of attracting new customers to casinos, and commenting on his ambitions for the Poker King Club,
Winfred Yu said:
“It has not always been the most profitable game among the casino games. But due to the slowdown in the revenues coming, poker becomes a bit more recognized as a way of bringing in traffic and gaming customers.”
At the opening night, a special charity poker tournament took place to raise money for Caritas Internationalis, an international Catholic relief organization, and Johnny Chan eventually triumphed over an eight man field, which included the likes of Ivey, Yu, Stanley Choi, Raymond Chow, Takeda Tsuneaki, and Yong Wai Kin.