[JeffreyH]

Hello All,

I work with the Asia Pacific Poker Tour and PokerStars Macau. I saw this thread and thought I'd offer a comprehensive update on the state of poker and poker tournaments in Macau.

There are currently two casinos that offer poker cash games in Macau and one more coming soon:

1. PokerStars Macau at Grand Waldo Casino
2. Grand Lisboa Casino
3. Galaxy StarWorld as of August 1
4. And there has been extensive speculation that several more casinos are considering opening poker rooms.

As for tournaments, the only place you'll find them regularly is at Grand Waldo Casino - where they run every week from Thursdays through Sundays. This is the PokerStars Macau tournament schedule

If you're a PokerStars.com player you can register for events online inside the game client. Just look under the "Events > PSM" tab. But note that the "enrolled" count in the game client is not the number of actual participants, rather just the number of people who registered online.

We regularly have 50-80 people for our tournaments on Friday and Saturday nights ($1,000 buy-in), and participation in the rest of our tournaments is growing steadily. Our cash games are busiest at these times, as people tend to move over to them as they bust out of tournaments. Since we opened on May 23, the busiest we've been is 113 players at tables, and last night (Friday July 25) we had 79 players in the room.

If you're new to No-Limit Texas Hold'em Poker, you can play our freerolls (no cost to enter) on Thursday nights at 8:30PM or Friday afternoon at 3:30PM. Prizes are entries to other events that weekend. There are also online freerolls on PokerStars on Tuesday and Wednesday nights at 8PM where you can win entries to the following weekend's events.

Besides weekly events, we also run special events every month (like this weekend's Macau Poker Cup) with larger entries and soon some significant guaranteed prize pools. Check the website regularly for news, or become a Facebook Fan of PSM and we'll send you updates.

You can also organize private tournaments with your friends or colleagues at PSM. If you're interested in that, e-mail macau@pokerstars.com with a request.

For fans of large-scale poker tournaments with hundreds of players and VERY RICH prize pools, there are several MASSIVE poker tournaments coming up late in August and early in September.

1. August 28-31 there is the APT event at StarWorld Casino with a $5,300 USD buy-in.
2. September 1-6 there is the Asia Pacific Poker Tour Main Event with a $25,000 HKD ($3,200 USD) buy-in and a $10,000,000 HKD guaranteed prize pool. This event will be produced for television and be broadcast all over the world.
3. September 7-9 there is the Asia Pacific Poker Tour High Roller Event with a $150,000 HKD ($19,250 USD) buy-in and a $10,000,000 HKD guaranteed prize pool. This event will be produced for television and be broadcast all over the world.

Satellites for APPT events are available online at many sites, with daily freerolls running on PokerStars at 8PM and 11PM. You can also qualify live at PokerStars Macau.

And that's just about everything you need to know about the state of poker in Macau.

Cheers,

Jeffrey