Are you interested in tapping into a market of over 4 billion people? Asians represent the largest, and fastest-growing, community on the planet. Additionally, according to research reported in the LA Times, Asians are about ten times more likely to gamble than the rest of the world. In other words, it’s crucial that you reach out and grab this low-hanging fruit as soon as possible.
To assist you with your research, we’ve highlighted the five most popular gambling games in Asian culture.
Baccarat
Played by multiple players with a standard deck of cards against a dealer, Baccarat games are often frequented by whales, or high-rollers, who may win or lose millions of dollars in a night. Baccarat is popular throughout the world, but it is especially dominant in Asian markets, like Macau.
Sic Bo
An ancient Chinese dice game, played with three dice, Sic Bo is the least standardized of the gambling games we present here. From casino to casino, both the available bets and payouts vary, so a player looking for a Sic Bo game is most likely interested in a game that resembles what he or she is used to playing at home.
Mahjong
Mahjong is a domino game that plays similar to a card game, like rummy, and gambling mahjong has very little in common with the solitaire version that Western players often find installed on their computers. Theorized to have been invented by Confucius, Mahjong is deeply engrained in both the Chinese and Japanese cultures.
Pai Gow
Traditional Pai Gow is played differently from the Americanized game called Pai Gow Poker in the States. In Asia, Pai Gow is a domino game played with Chinese dominoes that predates most, if not all, other casino games. In fact, historians have traced Pai Gow back to the Song Dynasty, somewhere around 1000AD. Pai Gow is one of only two games where it’s possible to find an edge for the player, the other being Video Poker, but the casino’s table conditions have to be perfect, and the player’s decisions must be optimal, to realize a maximum edge of 0.02%.
Keno
Tried and true, Keno’s slow pace and easy scoring makes it an easy side-game to play while gambling. Played like a lottery or a bingo, Keno cards are marked prior to a round, and as the round’s numbers are called, players tick off the numbers they guessed correctly. Since it typically takes between ten and fifteen minutes to complete a round of Keno, this affords players plenty of time to check their scores without interrupting their other gambling activities.