A half a world away, in a land quite different from the world I live in, construction cranes soar to the sky amid a building pit unlike any I've seen before. With two of the largest casino projects in the world set to open in 2009 or 2010, legal gaming-and hopefully poker-will soon arrive in Singapore.
Visiting this nation of about 4 million people for my second time in a few months, I was invited to speak March 23 at their first-ever poker conference. The Asian Poker Forum was the brain-child of my friend Vince Lau, and has been several years in the planning. It was well-received and more importantly, happily accepted by local legal officials. Through he waded through a lot of red tape, Vince finally achieved his mark in the poker world with the introduction of poker to the Singaporeans.
I met Vince online a few years ago when he contacted Linda Johnson and me about bringing poker to his homeland and how to go about doing so. Vince suffered some health issues which sidelined the project for a while and all but killed the idea of our taking part in it. It was hard to believe that a year later, we'd be approached again and actually see the forum through to fruition. We visited Singapore last November, and shared sushi on Thanksgiving, while getting to know Lau and his entourage. Over the next few months, while trying to make our schedules coincide, we arrived at some mutually acceptable dates and the forum was born.
I wrote this column from my hotel on Orchard Road, one of the most famous shopping streets in the world, and a day before my return to the U.S. We literally came over for the weekend just to participate-a 24-hour journey each way, and we were here for fewer than 50 hours!
We shared the stage with the highly experienced and wellknown Dr. Alan Soh, a past executive at both the Bicycle Casino and the Regency in Southern California. He currently runs a school to train the locals for the onslaught of poker and other casino games. The government estimates that 10,000 employees will be needed for the opening of these immense casinos, with 7,500 of those jobs going to local citizens if they are able to be trained in time. This is no easy task, but Alan feels up to the challenge.
Sharing the microphone with Dr. Soh and Linda Johnson, we each spoke about the growth and popularity of poker in the U.S., the transition of players from home games to casino cash games and tournament poker, the operations of a cardroom, as well as many other topics. The media was there in force and it was very cool to not only be featured in a news clip on the nightly ABC (Asian Broadcasting Company) news, but in their newspaper as well. Not only were our photos and interviews in the English language paper, they also were in the Chinese paper as well!
I plan to visit Singapore again before the grand opening of these two resorts in a couple of years. Suffice to say, I'll definitely be here for those galas!
Moving Right along... This time to Reno!
