Gambling cities. Gambling zones in Russia

Casinos are places where people make and lose fortunes, but some gambling complexes are more worthy of their status as temples of Lady Luck than others. Most often, these casinos are part of larger resorts that include hotels, restaurants and entertainment complexes. This same ranking of the world's largest casinos only takes into account the area where the gambling actually takes place.

Borgata Casino in Atlantic City

Atlantic City has long been known as America's favorite gambling destination and one of the most prominent resort towns in the Northeastern United States. While the entire complex is quite extensive and includes numerous restaurants, nightclubs and the largest hotel in New Jersey (the main Tower with 2,002 rooms), the casino itself occupies 80,000 square meters, has 4,000 coin-operated machines and 200 gaming tables. Not only is the Borgata impressive in scale, it is also really well run, being the most profitable casino in the city and one of the best in the US.

Casino Lisboa

The largest casino in Europe is located in the least expected of places: the Portuguese capital of Lisbon, on the shores of the Atlantic. Casino Lisboa is operated by a company owned by Hong Kong billionaire Stanley Ho, who also owns Casino Lisboa in Macau. The entire gaming area is 82,000 square meters with 1,000 slot machines and 26 poker tables. There are also seven restaurants and bars, as well as approximately 1,000 hotel rooms.

MGM Grand in Las Vegas

It's impossible to make a list of the biggest casinos in the world without including one from Sin City. In this case, it's the MGM Grand from Las Vegas. Located on the famous Las Vegas Strip, it is not only a huge 85,500 square meter casino, but also the second largest hotel in the world with 6,852 rooms. With more than 2,500 slot machines and 139 tables, in addition to a state-of-the-art sportsbook area, the MGM Grand in Las Vegas is one of the best places in the world for those looking to try their luck. Other entertainment venues are also present, including the world famous Hakkasan nightclub.

MGM Macau

MGM Macau (formerly called MGM Grand Macau) opened in late 2007 and is one of many huge casinos based in this wealthy city. Like other establishments on this list, it is also part of an extensive entertainment complex that includes a hotel, numerous restaurants and a conference center. The casino occupies 110,000 square meters and two floors around the magnificent Grande Praça, a huge shopping center right at the base of the hotel.

Sands Casino Macao

Another great casino in Macau. Opened in 2004, Sands Macao was the first Las Vegas-style casino in this popular city for gamblers. Since then, it has been one of the main sources of wealth for its owner, American billionaire Sheldon Adelson, one of the richest people in the world. The casino underwent an expansion and renovation process several years ago, increasing its area by almost 50%.

Rio Casino Resort in South Africa

Rio Casino Resort (formerly known as Tusk Rio Casino Resort) is the largest casino in Africa and the southern hemisphere. Located in the modest South African town of Klerksdorp, the casino has a gaming area of ​​130,000 square meters, in addition to 70 rooms at the Metcourt Hotel. As its name suggests, the casino is inspired by the famous Rio Carnival and provides guests with numerous entertainment options, in addition to all kinds of gambling.

Casino Ponte 16 in Macau

Located in the Macau Harbor area (historic city centre), Ponte 16 is a world-class resort consisting of a five-star hotel, casino and the first and only Michael Jackson gallery in Asia. The casino covers an area of ​​135,000 square meters with 109 gaming tables, 307 coin-operated machines and 2 VIP lounges. Its attractive design is inspired by Macau's unique cultural heritage, with European (mainly Portuguese) styling mixed with traditional Chinese elements.

Foxwoods Resorts Casino

Foxwoods Casino is located in Mashantucket, Connecticut, on the Pequot Indian Reservation. One of the largest entertainment complexes in North America, the resort includes six casinos, four hotels and several restaurants, including the Hard Rock Cafe. The casinos themselves cover an area of ​​172,000 square meters, with over 380 gaming tables and 6,300 slot machines.

City of Dreams in Macau

You've probably already realized that Macau is one of the best cities for gambling lovers. The City of Dreams is one of the largest casinos in the world with a total gaming area of ​​210,000 square meters, 450 gaming tables, and 1,514 slot machines. The casino is in good company as it is part of the same complex as the Grand Hyatt Macau and the Hard Rock Hotel.

Venetian Macao Casino

So, the largest casino in the world is also located in Macau. Modeled after the Venetian Las Vegas, the Macau casino is much more than a mere replica. Opened in 2007 on Macau's Cotai Strip, this stunningly large casino is not only the largest of its kind, but also the seventh largest building in the world in terms of total floor area. More than half of the 275,000 square meter area is gaming area with 3,400 coin-operated machines and 800 gaming tables, while the 15,000-seat CotaiArena is a superb venue for all types of events, from boxing, basketball and tennis matches, to shows and concerts.

The capital of the gambling world in our time is rightfully considered the American city of Las Vegas in the state of Nevada. And although the first casinos appeared in Europe, it is in Las Vegas that the largest casino in the world is located.

At the beginning of the last century, Las Vegas was not even a full-fledged city. It was an area with a bad reputation, as criminals escaped here, secret marriages took place here, and fist fights to the death took place here. Over time, the first illegal casinos began to appear here. Tired of the unsuccessful struggle, the authorities decided to allow gambling in this territory. From that moment the birth of the great Las Vegas with its luxurious casinos began. The brightest and most colorful city in the world with the most loyal attitude towards all visitors. Only in Las Vegas casinos in most cases there are no dress code rules and you can even come to the casino in jeans. In addition, Las Vegas is famous for its Cirque du Soleil at the Bellagio Hotel, as well as regular concerts of famous world stars.

Europe also has its own gambling capital - the city of Monte Carlo. This is a city of aristocrats and millionaires. And the casinos of this city are radically different from the casinos of Las Vegas. A strict dress code, namely tuxedos and evening dresses, a respectable environment, European conservatism and the architecture of the casino buildings in the Renaissance style equated visiting the casino with going out. The largest and oldest casino, Le Casino de Monte Carlo (Place du Casino), is decorated with paintings and sculptures by masters of the 18th and 19th centuries. Unlike Las Vegas, where slot machines and blackjack are especially popular, the main game in the Monte Carlo casino remains classic roulette.

Not inferior to Las Vegas in grandeur is the Chinese gambling center Macau, whose annual turnover is no less than Las Vegas. Macau is a port city in China and the only city in the country where casinos are allowed. There are already more than 50 casinos here. And the largest “Venetian Macao-Resort-Hotel” is second only to the American Boeing plant in area. This casino has slot machine halls, of which there are 3.4 thousand, 800 gaming tables and even online roulette, as well as many bars, shops and restaurants. A distinctive feature of this city is that prostitution is allowed here.

Interesting cities include the French city of Deauville, which is home to one of the oldest casinos, “Barrière de Deauville,” with a very interesting and mysterious history filled with various legends. The small town itself is the center of social life in France. Coco Chanel, members of the Rothschild family and many other famous people played in the Deauville casino, and Andre Citroen once lost more than $2.5 million here.

According to Forbes magazine, the third most beautiful Australian city in the world is Sydney, which is considered the pearl of Australia. The city is distinguished by its beauty, luxury, originality and comfort. Among the many of which there are a huge number, the entertainment center with a casino (Sydney Harbor Casino), which is located in Darling Harbor next to Pyrmont Bridge, stands out.

After the ban on gambling in Russia, special zones were created where you can legally enjoy the game and try your luck. For many today, the issue of the location of such places is acute, as they travel to the USA or Europe to indulge in pleasure and again feel a pleasant feeling of excitement. However, the casino is much closer than you might imagine.

Gambling zones in Russia for 2019

If you have been to European or American casinos, where there is gloss and a high level of service, then you will not like playing in Russia. However, for inexperienced people the services offered here will be sufficient. Russian casinos offer:

• roulette;
• black Jack;
• poker;
• slot machines.

Gambling zones on the map of Russia (photo)

• "Azov City". This site is located between the Rostov region and the Krasnodar region. 1000 hectares of land were allocated for it. The first casino opened in 2010. Since then, many other establishments have appeared that are waiting for new and regular players. Today, the fate of this territory is in question, since Sochi with a more developed infrastructure is nearby. While discussions are ongoing, the casino is working and pleasing players with its services.
• "Siberian coin", as the name implies, is located in Siberia, namely in its southern part. This site operates just 300 km from Barnaul, in the Altai Territory. Its size is 2300 hectares. Since 2014, there has been one casino operating here, which can accommodate up to 500 people at once. There are a large number of slot machines, poker, VIP rooms and much more. The construction of hotels and a number of new facilities is in development.
• "Primorye" located in the Far East near Vladivostok. The area of ​​this site is relatively small (620 hectares). There is also only one casino operating here, located in close proximity to Ant Bay. Roulette, blackjack, slot machines and poker are the main services of this establishment. In the future there will be hotels, a beach, a ski resort and a yacht club.
• "Amber" For now it only works on paper. It is located in the Kaliningrad region, but there is still not a single operating casino here. The problem is acceptance of the concept. Investors cannot agree on how exactly this site should be developed. Thus, the estimated launch date is 2029.

The main challenge is accessibility. Today, only rich people and people with above-average income can play in gambling establishments. By developing and offering various options for the middle class, it will be possible to significantly increase the income of gambling clubs and take them out of the online world. Experts say that it will not be possible to create a Russian Las Vegas, however, it will be possible to increase investment and tourist attractiveness.

Currently, there are several gambling zones in the world, in particular in the USA, Macau and Singapore.

One of the most popular in the world and leading in USA gambling center is Las Vegas (Nevada). Almost 40 million tourists visit the city every year.

In 1931, all gambling was officially legalized in the state of Nevada, while it remained illegal in most other states. In 1941, the first casino, El Rancho Vegas, opened in the city. Every year the number of casinos has constantly grown, and currently there are more than 120 casinos in the city, the total number of licensed gaming establishments exceeds 1,700, the number of slot machines is more than 200 thousand. In 2013, the profit of all gambling establishments in Las Vegas was $6.5 billion. The most famous casinos are Wynn Las Vegas, Flamingo, Planet Hollywood, Venetian, Bellagio, Luxor, Stratosphere, Circus Circus, etc.

One of the most famous scams Las Vegas casinos use an improved card counting system (developed in 1962 by mathematics professor Edward Thorpe). With her help in the 1990s. A team of American students known as the MIT Team, exchanging coded words and signs, won more than $10 million over several years.

The biggest robbery Las Vegas casino happened in 1993. Then criminals stole a truck parked near the Circus Circus casino, which contained about $3 million.

Biggest win in history- $40 million - received in March 2003 by an American programmer (who decided not to disclose his name) at the Excalibur casino in Las Vegas.

Such famous Hollywood films as “Viva Las Vegas”, “Ocean’s Eleven”, “The Godfather”, “Rain Man”, etc. were filmed in Las Vegas.

Another large gambling zone is located in Macau. Gambling in this territory, which once belonged to Portugal, has been permitted since 1847. The active development of the gambling business began in 1962, when the Sociedade de Turismo e Diverses de Macau (STDM) syndicate was granted monopoly rights to conduct all types of gambling . After sovereignty over Macau passed to the PRC in 1999, gambling policy did not change.

In 2002, the Sociedade de Turismo e Diverses de Macau's monopoly expired. Sociedade de Jogos de Macau (a subsidiary of STDM), as well as major global companies in this field: Wynn Resorts, Las Vegas Sands, Galaxy Entertainment Group, MGM Mirage, received the right to operate in the gambling business.

Macau is the only place in China, where you can legally gamble. There are 33 casinos here, with more than 4 thousand slot machines and 850 gaming tables. The most famous are the Galaxy, Grand Lisboa and The Venetian casinos. The gambling business brings Macau more than 70% of all revenues, which amounted to $45 billion in 2013. Macau casinos are visited annually by about 30 million tourists from around the world.

In 2011, scammers from Macau managed to pull off scam for $24 million playing baccarat (a card game in which players try to score as many points as possible using two or three cards). They replaced regular shuffles (a device for shuffling cards) with special ones equipped with cameras, sensors and mirrors, which were accidentally discovered during an inspection of casino equipment. As a result, seven people were arrested.

Currently, the third largest gambling area after Macau and Las Vegas is considered Singapore. A 40-year ban on gambling was lifted here in 2005. Only two casinos operate legally. They were opened only in 2010, their profitability in 2013 exceeded $6 billion. In the first gambling complex built in Singapore, Resorts World Sentosa on Sentosa Island, in addition to the casino, there are 10 restaurants, six hotels, a shopping center, and a Universal theme park Studios, Marine Life Park with the largest aquarium in the world and other entertainment facilities.

The second complex - Marina Bay Sands - consists of three 55-storey towers with a huge outdoor swimming pool on their roofs, and includes more than 2.5 thousand rooms for recreation, seven restaurants, an exhibition center, a museum, two cinemas, two ice skating rinks, shopping area.

Known scam, which was carried out at Resorts World Sentosa by a croupier and his two accomplices, robbing the casino of $100 thousand. The croupier overpaid his accomplices by $100 each time they exchanged their chips (chips) of $500 and $1000 for chips of lower denomination. In 2011, the court sentenced the croupier to 2 years in prison, and the accomplices to 21 months in prison each.

The casinos of these cities are considered to be “classics of the genre.” The most famous, luxurious and rich casinos of the Old and New Worlds are the fruits of the labor of many brilliant entrepreneurs, but sometimes they are a happy coincidence, like a gift from windy Fortune.

Baden Baden

It is generally accepted that modern gambling began in Baden-Baden, Germany, in October 1748. It was then that several tavern and hotel owners received the right to conduct gambling in their establishments. And in 1824, the Baden-Baden Gambling House opened - the most famous and most beautiful casino in the Old World. True, it should be noted that at that time a casino was understood as a kind of house of culture, and the gaming halls themselves could only be part of it. And, for example, in Kultur Kasino in Bern there was never a game at all. By the middle of the 19th century, Baden-Baden became a favorite vacation spot for European and Russian nobility. Russian writers become frequent guests of the city - Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, whose losses are legendary here. Residents of Baden-Baden, having learned that you are from Russia, will gasp for a long time and tell you legends about Russian Badeners. They will certainly show you the tree under which the prototype of Dostoevsky’s story “The Gambler” shot himself. True, the same tree will be shown to you in Wiesbaden and Bad Homburg. Nowadays Baden-Baden is called nothing more than “the city of millionaires” or “the summer capital of Europe”. Having become the birthplace of the modern gambling business, even after two centuries it managed to retain its fame as the European gambling capital of the world.

Bad Homburg

The history of Baden-Baden was repeated on a smaller scale in the resort town of Bad Homburg, now a suburb of Frankfurt. In 1843, the second oldest casino in Europe opened here, not without the arrival of the Russian nobility. This city has not gained the same fame as Baden-Baden, but it is worth mentioning for this reason. The casino in Bad Homburg belonged to the Frenchman Maurice Blanc. In 1861, Kaiser Wilhelm banned gambling in Germany, and it was also banned in France at that time. Therefore, leaving his casino, Blanc moved to the Principality of Monaco and went straight to a reception with Crown Prince Charles III. This was the beginning of the great history of Monte Carlo.

Monte Carlo

The Principality of Monaco is a narrow strip of coast about three kilometers long and no more than three hundred meters wide. The country is surrounded on three sides by French territory, and on the fourth by the Mediterranean Sea. For seven centuries, the owners of this very well located territory, the princes of Grimaldi, traded in piracy and robbery. But in the 19th century, the maritime racket ceased to be profitable, and the dynasty was on the verge of ruin. It was during this unkind time for Prince Charles III that Maurice Blanc came to him and said, according to legend, something like this: “What you are doing is childish. Give me a piece of territory on the other side of the bay, and I will build a city there that will rob all of Europe." After some thought, the ruler of Monaco agreed, stipulating as a condition a tenth share of the profits and that the city would be named after him. The deal was completed. Initially, the casino was located in a barn-like room with four gambling tables. Roulette and card games, prohibited by law in many European countries, magnetically attracted rich people from all over the world to Monte Carlo. A few years later, a huge gambling palace and hotel were built in Monte Carlo, a railway line was built, gardens were laid out, and the port was reconstructed. In 1866, by decree of the ruler of Monaco, Charles III, this part of the principality was solemnly renamed Monte Carlo.

For several years, Blanc was the European casino monopolist. By the way, the former Blanc casino in Bad Homburg later received the name “Mother of Monte Carlo”. Currently, the gaming complex in Monaco consists of two buildings. The casino has a huge number of rooms. There are more than forty roulette tables alone. There are halls where everyone is allowed to play, in any clothing, but they close at midnight. Entrance to the night halls is allowed only in tuxedos. Members of European royal houses, Formula 1 champions and Hollywood stars spend their time here. Bets on one baccarat game here sometimes reach $40,000.

Las Vegas

In the middle of a flat, cracked sand basin, surrounded on three sides by mountains, a mirage rises. Tourists approaching Las Vegas for the first time are literally glued to the windows in utter amazement - there, below, are the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building and the Brooklyn Bridge! And only the pilots habitually turn the car around, focusing on the column of light shooting vertically from the Cheops pyramid. The appearance of all this here in the desert is unrealistic, illogical, inexplicable by rational reasons. This is the result of a chain of accidents.

In 1829, a trade caravan heading to Los Angeles lost its way. Under the heavy sun of the red desert, death awaited him and would have waited if the Mexican Rafael Rivera had not been lucky enough to find an oasis with an artesian spring among the sands. Raphael called this place "Fertile Valleys", in Spanish "Las Vegas". In 1864, this territory became the 36th American state - Nevada. And in 1931, Nevada became the first and only state to legalize gambling. This coincided, very conveniently, with the start of construction of a grandiose dam on the Colorado River, 50 km from the Las Vegas railway station. To “organize leisure time” for five thousand workers, several casinos opened in the city. In 1936, after construction was completed, crowds of tourists came to see this gigantic dam and they traveled mainly in their cars along Highway 91. Hotels that received tourists stood along the highway, a little far from the city center. Casinos, on the contrary, were concentrated in the center. This discrepancy first caught the eye of gambling magnate Thomas Hull, and in 1941 he built the luxurious El Rancho hotel-casino next to the highway. From that time on, the rapid transformation of a small section of the highway into the gambling street of the Strip began, and Las Vegas into an American and world gambling center.

“El Rancho” and “Flamingo” began the tradition of building “themed” casino hotels, each of which provided its guests with some kind of living legend - a piece of ancient Rome, Egypt, Paris. The latest new buildings of the late 20th century are simply amazing. Inside the world's most expensive hotel, the Bellagio, there is an 8-acre artificial lake surrounded by poplar trees and "Tuscan" villas. The Mandalay Bay Hotel contains a tropical lagoon complete with beach and surf. And in the “Venice” under construction there will be a copy of St. Mark’s Square and a half-kilometer canal with real gondoliers. This will cost an absolutely astronomical amount - $2,250 million. It’s not surprising, according to experts, the daily profit of the global gambling center is about 15 billion (!) dollars.

So, this is a classic of the genre. But new casinos and luxurious gaming complexes are appearing all over the world: Atlantic City, Macau and other cities will soon claim the title of gaming capitals of the world. However, Fortune can smile on you in numerous casinos and gaming centers in our city, so don’t miss your chance and hit the jackpot.