This article first appeared in the Jan/Feb 2012 issue of World Gaming magazine.
Two hundred top-notch baccarat players sat down last October to battle it out in the first ever baccarat tournament held at Galaxy Macau. With the “New Palace of Asia” joining the long list of properties spreading baccarat tournaments it looks like this growing phenomena is here to stay.
When the final cards were dealt, the winner – a woman from Hong Kong – walked away with an impressive HK$1,380,000 in winnings and the unofficial title of Galaxy Macau’s Queen of Baccarat. Plenty of other players also shared in the whopping prize pool that was in excess of HK$3 million.
Baccarat tournaments have been around for a while now but this surge rides on the success of massively popular poker tournaments seen in the past decade. Macau is the perfect place to call the “home of international baccarat tournaments” as it has the facilities and the player base to really support it.
Galaxy Entertainment Group President and Chief Operating Officer, Mr Michael Mecca
Of the October tournament, Mr Michael Mecca, President and Chief Operating Officer of Galaxy Entertainment Group said, “All of us at Galaxy Macau congratulate these players for their performance in our first baccarat tournament.”
“We’re going to be hosting more events like this in the near future, so we encourage anyone who likes to play to come try the New Palace of Asia.”
The tournament was held at Galaxy Macau’s luxuriously designed, 39,000 square-metre casino gaming floor. With capacity for over 600 tables, there is plenty of space to offer major world-class baccarat tournaments. It shouldn’t be long before we see baccarat tournaments being run with even larger numbers of entrants playing for astronomical amounts of prize pool money.
World Gaming magazine spoke to Galaxy Macau’s Ellen Chui about Galaxy’s plans for future tournaments.
“We plan to have at least three or four baccarat tournaments in 2012. The first of these should be in March and we are really excited about the prospect of holding even more tournaments,” said Ms Chui.
At World Gaming we would like to see more cash buy-in baccarat tournaments just like they have with poker. In Macau there has been a tendency to run baccarat tournaments as a promotion or a free competition rather than a direct buy-in event. The best thing about a tournament should be that everyone pays the same amount of money and sits down with an equal chance. A player’s skill and the luck of the cards should be the difference between winning and losing. When baccarat tournaments follow this protocol the popularity of this form of competition will sky rocket.
Let’s hope that Galaxy Macau leads the way.
