The poker game has been a part of card games competitions for more than two hundred years already. Undoubtedly, poker has charmed the majority of the planet, starting from poker rooms on river boats and in bars on the Wild West in the past and up to modern card rooms with a huge amount of tables and luxurious casinos all over the world. Be it the USA, Europe or even Latin and South America, poker has become a super popular game of the 21st century. But even now there is a “new horizon”, which will be actively conquered in the forthcoming years, in order to move poker to the new stage of its popularity among dozens of millions of new players.
This “new horizon” is a continental Asia. One billion people lives in China, one more billion is the population of India, and one more billion is spread over the remaining part of the continent. Considering such an amount of potential poker players, this market is a “gold vein” for organizers of the game. Only recently this horizon started to be developed (with or without the assistance of local governments). The new horizon can become the last one for poker, meaning that it will completely conquer the whole world. Organizers of poker assure that by the end of 2007 many Asians understand perfectly well what is “blind”, “turn” and “river”.
For a long time on-line companies have been interested in the possibility of entering Asian markets (particularly, Chinese market), but governments of Asian countries prevent on-line or traditional gambling industry from full-scale development. The government of India, for example, does not actively support the idea of the gambling industry (though there are six casinos in this country). China, which will host international Olympic games-2008, the government gradually weakens the control over the Internet. This is very good news for the representatives of the gambling industry, who have already prepared to launch a large-scale acquaintance of Asia with poker.
Steve Wynn, the owner of hotels and casinos all over the world, is ready to bring his brilliant and glamorous style to the Asian market. “Wynn Macau”, the complex of casinos and hotels, was opened on September 5 in Macao. It familiarizes the Asian continent with the luxury of Las-Vegas. It includes hotels of 600 rooms and casinos, which undoubtedly offer gambling and poker games, just like the other Steve Wynn’s institutions do all over the world. The 20-storeyed hotel will be an exact copy of the hotel-casino “Wynn Las Vegas”. The company plans to arrange further spreading of table games throughout the continent.
TV has also brought poker tournaments onto the Asian market. The most popular world poker tournament (World Poker Tour or WPT) has recently granted a license to TV stations in Macao and Singapore for them to show the first season of WPT games to the Asian audience. But the continent is getting ready to organize its own outstanding poker tournaments. The organization entitled “PanAsia Poker Tour” has recently declared that the debut of this new championship will take place in November, and it is for the first time in history that the official championship will take place in Manila, Philippines.
