Inside Asian Gaming

inside asian gaming MArch 2016 6 Growing fast in Asia, cruises may not float the boat for serious gaming customers, but they’re another option to casinos for the wave of leisure travelers Macau covets Cover Story By Muhammad Cohen , Editor At Large Muhammad Cohen also blogs for Forbes on gaming throughout Asia and wrote Hong Kong On Air , a novel set during the 1997 handover about TV news, love, betrayal, high finance and cheap lingerie. S hipboard gaming undoubtedly developed as soon as two sailors weren’t yanking an oar or pulling a sheet – that’s a rope for you lubbers. The riverboat gambler is a staple of American folklore, and the phrase resides in the American lexicon as a synonym for big risk taker. After New Jersey became the second US state to legalize casino gambling in 1976, some Midwest jurisdictions bet on a revival of riverboat gaming with mixed results. In India’s Goa state, table games are only permitted on ships. Grand Korea Leisure floated the idea of gaming cruises and got torpedoed by South Korean authorities. Floating casinos that didn’t leave the pier were fixtures of pre-liberalization Macau and gave NagaWorld in Phnom Penh its start in 1995. These days, shipboard gaming in Asia overwhelmingly takes place on cruises plying international waters. Once a vessel leaves national Full Steam Ahead