Party Poker Premier League Wiki
2021年5月7日Register here: http://gg.gg/uiu8o
THE UNKNOWN KING of international gambling employs a lively step. He tiptoes through U.S. District Courtroom 3D in Las Vegas, having danced out of similar situations before.
It is Aug. 5, 2014. Paul Phua approaches the lectern in Magistrate Judge Cam Ferenbach’s walnut-paneled courtroom. He wears a charcoal-colored suit, white shirt and no tie, a pair of glasses lending him an expedient air of frailty. As Phua enters his plea, the right hand of his attorney soothes his shoulders.
’Not guilty, your honor,’ Phua says, his voice a whisper. But anyone who has joined him at a World Series of Poker (WSOP) table would recognize his expression of quiet confidence.
In this city of deception, who still falls for illusions? Paul Phua, this modest figure, is the biggest bookmaker in the world. For years, Phua has navigated the globe in an ultra-long-range business jet, its tail designation -- N888XS -- a nod to the Chinese belief in lucky number eight and the overindulgence that often accompanies a gambling windfall. With billions of dollars reportedly at hand, Phua has erected a gaming empire, touching down in Hong Kong, Las Vegas, London, Melbourne and anyplace in between where there are casinos, nosebleed poker games and gamblers ready to place max bets on the world’s most lucrative sporting events.
Gambling in China is illegal under Chinese law and has been officially outlawed since the Communist Party took power in 1949. Any form of gambling by Chinese citizens, including online-gambling, gambling overseas, opening casinos overseas to attract citizens of China as primary customers, is considered illegal.
*Heat 4 Party Poker Premier League IV, Las Vegas 6th $ 6,000 13-Feb-2010: United States: Heat 2 Party Poker Premier League IV, Las Vegas 7th $ 4,000 23-Jan-2010: Australia: A$ 100,000 + 500 $100,000 Challenge 2010 Aussie Millions Poker Championship, Melbourne 5th A$ 100,000 $ 92,296 Dec-2009: England: Heat 2.
*Boomtown Poker Room. We don’t recognize the web browser you’re currently using. Boomtown Casino, Fort McMurray, Canada, Good Entertainment. Yes No 1 ReportShare Facebook Twitter Copy link 2.0 Job Work/Life Balance Compensation/Benefits Job Security/Advancement Management Job Culture it was a fun jobSlot Attendant (Former Employee) – boomtown casino fort mcmurray hours Bossier City, rooms.
*The PartyPoker Premier League is one of the two televised poker cash games by PartyPoker and you can watch every episode online for free here at PokerTube. If you like this one you should also check out PartyPoker The Big Gamealso!
*Caribbean Poker Party 9th - 17th Nov 2018 $22.1M GTD WPT Montreal 21st Oct - 4th Nov 2018 C$8.165M GTD.
Now Phua has landed in a place -- U.S. federal court -- where his status as gambling kingpin can only work against him. The FBI, with guns drawn, raided Phua’s villa at Caesars Palace on July 9 of last year, during the 2014 WSOP. The Department of Justice alleged that Phua and seven others ran an illegal sports betting enterprise, a ’wire room,’ in the parlance, handling nearly $400 million in illegal wagers on last year’s World Cup.
Each charge -- operating an illegal gambling business and transmitting wagering information -- carried a seven-year maximum prison term. But as grave as breaking U.S. gaming law might have been, the case against Phua was about more than taking chits on soccer games. It is indicative of the U.S. government’s increasing concern over how, and from where, money flows into Las Vegas and the U.S. financial system.
Since Phua’s arrest in July 2014, ESPN has conducted more than 80 interviews in eight countries and examined thousands of pages of court filings, which tell the story behind the Caesars raid, involving many high-profile players: the world’s biggest poker stars, Wall Street investors, Chinese criminal figures, an All-America basketball player-turned-financial-crimes crusader and the former head of Interpol, each looped into a mystifying, multibillion-dollar shell game.
At the center of it all is Phua (pronounced ’Pwa’), an unassuming 51-year-old Malaysian and the reputed principal owner of the world’s largest sportsbook, IBCBet. Phua, who declined requests to be interviewed for this story, was the reason that poker savant Tom Dwan was learning Mandarin and that poker megastar Phil Ivey was frequently spotted at the StarWorld casino in the Chinese gambling enclave of Macau. According to the Department of Justice in court filings, Phua was a senior member of a Hong Kong criminal group known as the 14K triad (Phua’s legal representatives dispute the allegation); testimony under oath also indicated that Caesars was suspicious of funds he had transferred inside its properties.
What follows is the story of Phua’s rise from a Borneo numbers runner to the biggest bookie around -- as well as the most powerful figure in poker. And how the FBI finally hooked him, only to watch him walk away a free man.WHO IS PAUL PHUA?
When the U.S. government impounded Phua’s $48 million Gulfstream V jet as part of a bail agreement, Phil Ivey picked up a good portion of the rest ($2.5 million) to spring Phua and a fellow defendant. Ivey’s generosity aroused speculation: Just who was Paul Phua? A collection of associates, investigators and gambling executives relate the following details.
Wei Seng ’Paul’ Phua was born in the town of Miri, on the island of Borneo, in Malaysia. As an adult, he ventured across the South China Sea to Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital. Phua started working construction jobs, but he quickly found more lucrative surroundings. ’When he was in Kuala Lumpur, he mixed around with small-time Chinese gamblers in the Chinese coffee shops,’ says an investigator from Malaysia’s D7 squad, a division of the Royal Malaysian Police Crime Investigation Department, which is tasked with combating gambling, vice and organized crime. Phua learned how to set lines on soccer games, eventually becoming a bookmaker. ’His reputation started growing by word of mouth,’ the investigator says.
Phua was rising through the sports betting business at a moment, the late 1990s, when the industry was about to undergo revolutionary change. Bookmaking had always been a local activity, with bookmakers marketing to clientele from whom they could collect in person. Internet-deployed technology was allowing bookmakers to reach across international boundaries, marketing their services to a global clientele. A fortunate few bookies would emerge from the mass of Asian sportsbooks and build name brands. Transformation would require capital investment into IT. Phua happened upon a scheme that would secure the financial wherewithal to harness this innovation.
In 1997, soccer officials suspended two English Premier League matches -- West Ham vs. Crystal Palace and Arsenal vs. Wimbledon -- after the stadium lights lost power. Each match had entered the second half, so by the rules of Asian bookmaking, bets on these matches had to be paid based on the score as it stood. The games came to be known among international bookmakers as the Floodlights Affair, the first confirmed incidence of Asian-backed match-fixing on English soil.
A stadium security guard and three Asian men -- two Malaysian nationals and a Hong Kong native -- were found guilty of conspiracy charges related to match-fixing. Phua was never linked to the crime or charged during the proceedings; however, multiple sources close to him tell a different story.
’Paul Phua financed it,’ says a Phua associate. ’If you know the outcome of a Premier League match, you can make an absolutely enormous amount of money. This money allowed Paul Phua to go from being one of the top eight or so bookies in Malaysia to being absolutely massive.’
With new capital, Phua funded the IT development that placed his sportsbook -- now called IBCBet -- online and at the vanguard of industry technology. It ultimately became the de facto line setter in Asia. Like others in the industry, he recruited an international network of trusted agents and subagents who drummed up business in dozens of countries, say longtime agents and a former executive of IBCBet.
Along the way, Phua partnered with Seng Chen ’Richard’ Yong, a regular in the Kuala Lumpur gambling scene who the Hong Kong police confirm has been convicted for fixing horse races. Yong had contacts throughout Asia, and as Phua looked to expand IBCBet, Yong helped him move his operation first to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. IBCBet would eventually be registered in the Philippines, among the few Asian jurisdictions where online sportsbooks remain legal. According to trade estimates, IBCBet handles roughly $60 billion of betting per year. With a 1 percent take, the book clears $600 million annually. An IBCBet source in Manila says Phua owns 70 percent of the enterprise.
’He is a hell of a risk taker,’ says a Macau casino executive who has known Phua since the early 2000s. ’He went bankrupt twice in his career. The first time was in Malaysia. The second time was slightly more than 10 years ago in Hong Kong, Macau. There’s a rumor that he did the infamous English Premier League lights-switch-off case. That’s how he saved his ass the last time. He’s a guy who can pull things like that off.’
Although Phua’s book expanded globally, he was never far from home. During the Euro 2004 soccer championships, Malaysia’s D7 police squad tracked intense illegal betting activity to a condominium at the Miri Golf Club, in Phua’s hometown. In the early hours of July 5, officers approached the condo. Portugal and Greece had just kicked off in the Euro final, and police cut the condo’s satellite TV cable. When a man exited the condo to check the cable, D7 agents pounced.
Police discovered a wire room with 22 men -- from Vietnam, Hong Kong and Macau -- working banks of computers. They made an additional discovery: Paul Phua.
Authorities shut down the illegal operation, and according to the arresting officer, they fined Phua roughly $8,000 and drove him to the airport, where he boarded a flight to Vietnam. The bust didn’t impact Phua. But it was a sign, had Phua been one to acknowledge it, that international law enforcement was taking an interest in the game he was playing.MADE IN MACAU
The ferry cuts across the Pearl River Delta from Hong Kong, launching off the surf of an approaching monsoon, slamming into the downslopes, windowpanes rattling. The lights of Macau glow from the coast. In fire-orange blaze, the word ’Sands’ is scrawled across the broadside of one of the city’s largest casinos. It was through this property that Phua gained the prominence that would make regulators in Nevada take note of this new player.
Vegas slick has transformed Macau, a town of 11 square miles on China’s southern coastline, into the prime mover of international gaming. Las Vegas Sands was the first American casino to open here, in 2004. Then came Wynn Resorts, then MGM Resorts International. Sheldon Adelson, the chairman and CEO of Las Vegas Sands, stated that he recouped his initial $260 million Macau investment within eight months of operations.
Phua provided a key to this boom. A symbiotic relationship has always existed between casino gambling and sports gambling -- Phua’s clientele was hooked on action, not just on sports. When the Macau Sands opened, according to a casino executive at the time, Phua, with another Hong Kong partner, directed his VIP gamblers toward Adelson’s new operation for a percentage. Phua and his partner eventually established Sat Ieng Company Limited, a junket company, which brings mainland Chinese high rollers to Macau and extends them credit.
Phua became a regular presence on the Macau nightlife circuit. He would play Liar’s Dice -- a game of deception and bidding -- in Macau nightclubs. Phua wouldn’t bet for drinks, as was customary, since he didn’t consume alcohol. For him, it was always high cash stakes. ’He bets on everything,’ says one Macau casino executive, who says Phua was known for risking tens of millions of dollars at a time on futures and securities. ’In the early days in Macau, he would go out with eight black-suited bodyguards to nightclubs. Which is a no-no, which really attracts attention.’
When Adelson’s Vegas rival Steve Wynn opened the $1.2 billion Wynn Macau casino, he naturally offered Paul Phua a 0.1 percent increase over his Sands commission of 1.1 percent to also funnel gamblers to the Wynn, according to reports in the South China Morning Post. In the year that Phua signed with Wynn, Macau casino revenue grew to $6.95 billion, making it the world’s largest gambling market. By 2013, Macau’s annual gaming revenue had grown to more than $45 billion. This growth -- which Adelson and Wynn publicly fronted -- was propelled in part by Phua, who for the moment remained unknown to those located anywhere but at the center of the industry. (Wynn’s and Adelson’s companies declined comment but have denied any association with organized crime in the past; both have partnered with junkets, including those owned by Phua.)
Vue js slot props. ’Sands proved that there was huge demand in the market,’ says Adam Rosenberg, a former head of global gaming for Goldman Sachs’ investment banking division, who is now the managing director of gaming and leisure at Fortress Investment Group. ’Analysts realized that Macau had transformed from a small, risky market into a place of enormous growth.’
As it did so, Phua’s wealth and reputation expanded. ’Everyone’s nervous about talking about him,’ says a Macau casino executive. ’Usually these guys like to brag about who they know, how close they are to these big hitters. But with Phua, they all say, ’Hey, you don’t want to mess around with this guy.’
Macau is full of tough guys, real and self-imagined. After Broken Tooth Koi, the former head of the 14K triad, was released from prison, in 2012, he joined Phua for dinner. The encounter, photographed by intelligence operatives, fed rumors that Phua himself was a high-ranking 14K figure. ’He has triad connections,’ says a Macau casino executive. ’He’s rich. He’s not a triad. Any rich man who knows a lot of triads here can cause harm to you if you say something that they don’t like.’
And this is why Macau itself would always be a risk for investors, since its growth was inextricably linked to organized crime. Macau’s biggest clients -- by a staggering margin -- came from mainland China, where it is illegal to operate a debt-collection company. The junket companies relied on Chinese criminal groups -- the triads -- to collect player debt on the mainland. Without the junkets, there would be no Macau boom. Without the triads, there would be no junkets. Partnering with junkets and major junket figures such as Paul Phua -- as the Western casinos realized was essential to doing business in Macau -- suggested partnering with triads.
Eventually, the U.S. Treasury Department grew curious. While Washington quietly began scrutinizing Vegas operators in Macau, Phua was none the wiser, fueling his own intense personal gambling habit at the enclave’s baccarat tables. A new card game would soon come to his attention, drawing Phua from the shade.HIGHER STAKES, HIGHER STACKS
Baccarat, a game of chance, has long been king in Asia. Poker’s reliance on strategy opposed the Chinese faith in luck. No Macau casino even offered a poker table.
But in 2008, a gaming company, AsianLogic, purchased the Asian Poker Tour (APT). Tom Hall, an English-Chinese bookmaker from Hong Kong, owned a stake in AsianLogic, and he held a position at a coding company that had contracts with IBCBet. ’Paul and Richard [Yong] were the biggest whales in the world,’ Hall says. ’They were losing $30 million to $100 million every year on baccarat. I said, ’Hey, you guys should try poker. You can play other players, instead of losing to the house.’
They didn’t know how to play. In Macau, there was no one to teach them. Phua and Yong gathered a small group of associates for regular games, these experienced gamblers teaching themselves this new game as they went along. ’That first year, if you won, you had to show your hand,’ says Hall, who had a seat at the table. ’People began to understand how to bluff.’ Having gone some distance in understanding poker, they were now ready when the game would come to them.
In 2010, Hall traveled to Las Vegas. There he mixed with top players, including a couple of guys from New Jersey: Tom Dwan and Phil Ivey. A perplexing player who competed mostly online, Dwan danced the edge between genius and fool, playing hands that others would ordinarily discard. Ivey has won 10 WSOP bracelets and more than $22 million in casino winnings. Hall told them about a table in Macau stocked with fresh fish swimming in liquid stakes.
The Macau APT tournament began on Nov. 6, 2010, at the City of Dreams casino. Dwan entered play, but he and Ivey were more concerned with Phua’s private game. ’That first table was Ivey, Paul, Richard, Dwan, Johnny Chan, John Juanda, Chau Giang and myself,’ Hall says.
Matt Savage, who administered the APT event, wrote about the big table on 2+2, a poker portal. He mentioned ’some Chinese businessmen’ and extraordinary pots. Savage went on to write that ’there was about 40 million on the table last night when I saw the game. When I asked Dwan when he was moving here he said, ’very soon.’ By the time Dwan left Macau, he had won, by several estimates, $9 million. The same amount was awarded to the winner of the WSOP main event -- a 10-day slog.
The Macau table appeared at a critical moment. Online poker remained the primary venue for lucrative pots. In 2011, a federal judge unsealed an indictment in a $3 billion case against PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker, the largest U.S. poker sites. The case alleged that these companies had violated the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. The government shuttered the sites, freezing their funds. Many players maintained accounts with these companies, some running into the millions of dollars. That money was gone, along with the U.S. online poker industry.
The effect on the poker community, which refers to that day as Black Friday, was instantaneous. ’All these online players became live players, flooding the casinos,’ says Justin Smith, who has three WSOP final table appearances. With an increasing number of states legalizing gambling, players didn’t have to travel to Vegas, causing the size of pots on the Las Vegas Strip -- and everywhere -- to dwindle. ’Immediately, players starting looking for other countries to play in,’ Smith says.
Macau was far, a whole day by plane from the U.S., with crippling connections. If you could get a seat at Phua’s table, however, the trip was worth the hassle.
Today, the poker community regards Phua as a deep-pocketed, high-amateur player. But during the aftermath of Black Friday, he was a whisper. Accessing his table at the Starworld Casino was a waiting game, which played out across Avenida 24 de Junho at th
https://diarynote.indered.space
THE UNKNOWN KING of international gambling employs a lively step. He tiptoes through U.S. District Courtroom 3D in Las Vegas, having danced out of similar situations before.
It is Aug. 5, 2014. Paul Phua approaches the lectern in Magistrate Judge Cam Ferenbach’s walnut-paneled courtroom. He wears a charcoal-colored suit, white shirt and no tie, a pair of glasses lending him an expedient air of frailty. As Phua enters his plea, the right hand of his attorney soothes his shoulders.
’Not guilty, your honor,’ Phua says, his voice a whisper. But anyone who has joined him at a World Series of Poker (WSOP) table would recognize his expression of quiet confidence.
In this city of deception, who still falls for illusions? Paul Phua, this modest figure, is the biggest bookmaker in the world. For years, Phua has navigated the globe in an ultra-long-range business jet, its tail designation -- N888XS -- a nod to the Chinese belief in lucky number eight and the overindulgence that often accompanies a gambling windfall. With billions of dollars reportedly at hand, Phua has erected a gaming empire, touching down in Hong Kong, Las Vegas, London, Melbourne and anyplace in between where there are casinos, nosebleed poker games and gamblers ready to place max bets on the world’s most lucrative sporting events.
Gambling in China is illegal under Chinese law and has been officially outlawed since the Communist Party took power in 1949. Any form of gambling by Chinese citizens, including online-gambling, gambling overseas, opening casinos overseas to attract citizens of China as primary customers, is considered illegal.
*Heat 4 Party Poker Premier League IV, Las Vegas 6th $ 6,000 13-Feb-2010: United States: Heat 2 Party Poker Premier League IV, Las Vegas 7th $ 4,000 23-Jan-2010: Australia: A$ 100,000 + 500 $100,000 Challenge 2010 Aussie Millions Poker Championship, Melbourne 5th A$ 100,000 $ 92,296 Dec-2009: England: Heat 2.
*Boomtown Poker Room. We don’t recognize the web browser you’re currently using. Boomtown Casino, Fort McMurray, Canada, Good Entertainment. Yes No 1 ReportShare Facebook Twitter Copy link 2.0 Job Work/Life Balance Compensation/Benefits Job Security/Advancement Management Job Culture it was a fun jobSlot Attendant (Former Employee) – boomtown casino fort mcmurray hours Bossier City, rooms.
*The PartyPoker Premier League is one of the two televised poker cash games by PartyPoker and you can watch every episode online for free here at PokerTube. If you like this one you should also check out PartyPoker The Big Gamealso!
*Caribbean Poker Party 9th - 17th Nov 2018 $22.1M GTD WPT Montreal 21st Oct - 4th Nov 2018 C$8.165M GTD.
Now Phua has landed in a place -- U.S. federal court -- where his status as gambling kingpin can only work against him. The FBI, with guns drawn, raided Phua’s villa at Caesars Palace on July 9 of last year, during the 2014 WSOP. The Department of Justice alleged that Phua and seven others ran an illegal sports betting enterprise, a ’wire room,’ in the parlance, handling nearly $400 million in illegal wagers on last year’s World Cup.
Each charge -- operating an illegal gambling business and transmitting wagering information -- carried a seven-year maximum prison term. But as grave as breaking U.S. gaming law might have been, the case against Phua was about more than taking chits on soccer games. It is indicative of the U.S. government’s increasing concern over how, and from where, money flows into Las Vegas and the U.S. financial system.
Since Phua’s arrest in July 2014, ESPN has conducted more than 80 interviews in eight countries and examined thousands of pages of court filings, which tell the story behind the Caesars raid, involving many high-profile players: the world’s biggest poker stars, Wall Street investors, Chinese criminal figures, an All-America basketball player-turned-financial-crimes crusader and the former head of Interpol, each looped into a mystifying, multibillion-dollar shell game.
At the center of it all is Phua (pronounced ’Pwa’), an unassuming 51-year-old Malaysian and the reputed principal owner of the world’s largest sportsbook, IBCBet. Phua, who declined requests to be interviewed for this story, was the reason that poker savant Tom Dwan was learning Mandarin and that poker megastar Phil Ivey was frequently spotted at the StarWorld casino in the Chinese gambling enclave of Macau. According to the Department of Justice in court filings, Phua was a senior member of a Hong Kong criminal group known as the 14K triad (Phua’s legal representatives dispute the allegation); testimony under oath also indicated that Caesars was suspicious of funds he had transferred inside its properties.
What follows is the story of Phua’s rise from a Borneo numbers runner to the biggest bookie around -- as well as the most powerful figure in poker. And how the FBI finally hooked him, only to watch him walk away a free man.WHO IS PAUL PHUA?
When the U.S. government impounded Phua’s $48 million Gulfstream V jet as part of a bail agreement, Phil Ivey picked up a good portion of the rest ($2.5 million) to spring Phua and a fellow defendant. Ivey’s generosity aroused speculation: Just who was Paul Phua? A collection of associates, investigators and gambling executives relate the following details.
Wei Seng ’Paul’ Phua was born in the town of Miri, on the island of Borneo, in Malaysia. As an adult, he ventured across the South China Sea to Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital. Phua started working construction jobs, but he quickly found more lucrative surroundings. ’When he was in Kuala Lumpur, he mixed around with small-time Chinese gamblers in the Chinese coffee shops,’ says an investigator from Malaysia’s D7 squad, a division of the Royal Malaysian Police Crime Investigation Department, which is tasked with combating gambling, vice and organized crime. Phua learned how to set lines on soccer games, eventually becoming a bookmaker. ’His reputation started growing by word of mouth,’ the investigator says.
Phua was rising through the sports betting business at a moment, the late 1990s, when the industry was about to undergo revolutionary change. Bookmaking had always been a local activity, with bookmakers marketing to clientele from whom they could collect in person. Internet-deployed technology was allowing bookmakers to reach across international boundaries, marketing their services to a global clientele. A fortunate few bookies would emerge from the mass of Asian sportsbooks and build name brands. Transformation would require capital investment into IT. Phua happened upon a scheme that would secure the financial wherewithal to harness this innovation.
In 1997, soccer officials suspended two English Premier League matches -- West Ham vs. Crystal Palace and Arsenal vs. Wimbledon -- after the stadium lights lost power. Each match had entered the second half, so by the rules of Asian bookmaking, bets on these matches had to be paid based on the score as it stood. The games came to be known among international bookmakers as the Floodlights Affair, the first confirmed incidence of Asian-backed match-fixing on English soil.
A stadium security guard and three Asian men -- two Malaysian nationals and a Hong Kong native -- were found guilty of conspiracy charges related to match-fixing. Phua was never linked to the crime or charged during the proceedings; however, multiple sources close to him tell a different story.
’Paul Phua financed it,’ says a Phua associate. ’If you know the outcome of a Premier League match, you can make an absolutely enormous amount of money. This money allowed Paul Phua to go from being one of the top eight or so bookies in Malaysia to being absolutely massive.’
With new capital, Phua funded the IT development that placed his sportsbook -- now called IBCBet -- online and at the vanguard of industry technology. It ultimately became the de facto line setter in Asia. Like others in the industry, he recruited an international network of trusted agents and subagents who drummed up business in dozens of countries, say longtime agents and a former executive of IBCBet.
Along the way, Phua partnered with Seng Chen ’Richard’ Yong, a regular in the Kuala Lumpur gambling scene who the Hong Kong police confirm has been convicted for fixing horse races. Yong had contacts throughout Asia, and as Phua looked to expand IBCBet, Yong helped him move his operation first to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. IBCBet would eventually be registered in the Philippines, among the few Asian jurisdictions where online sportsbooks remain legal. According to trade estimates, IBCBet handles roughly $60 billion of betting per year. With a 1 percent take, the book clears $600 million annually. An IBCBet source in Manila says Phua owns 70 percent of the enterprise.
’He is a hell of a risk taker,’ says a Macau casino executive who has known Phua since the early 2000s. ’He went bankrupt twice in his career. The first time was in Malaysia. The second time was slightly more than 10 years ago in Hong Kong, Macau. There’s a rumor that he did the infamous English Premier League lights-switch-off case. That’s how he saved his ass the last time. He’s a guy who can pull things like that off.’
Although Phua’s book expanded globally, he was never far from home. During the Euro 2004 soccer championships, Malaysia’s D7 police squad tracked intense illegal betting activity to a condominium at the Miri Golf Club, in Phua’s hometown. In the early hours of July 5, officers approached the condo. Portugal and Greece had just kicked off in the Euro final, and police cut the condo’s satellite TV cable. When a man exited the condo to check the cable, D7 agents pounced.
Police discovered a wire room with 22 men -- from Vietnam, Hong Kong and Macau -- working banks of computers. They made an additional discovery: Paul Phua.
Authorities shut down the illegal operation, and according to the arresting officer, they fined Phua roughly $8,000 and drove him to the airport, where he boarded a flight to Vietnam. The bust didn’t impact Phua. But it was a sign, had Phua been one to acknowledge it, that international law enforcement was taking an interest in the game he was playing.MADE IN MACAU
The ferry cuts across the Pearl River Delta from Hong Kong, launching off the surf of an approaching monsoon, slamming into the downslopes, windowpanes rattling. The lights of Macau glow from the coast. In fire-orange blaze, the word ’Sands’ is scrawled across the broadside of one of the city’s largest casinos. It was through this property that Phua gained the prominence that would make regulators in Nevada take note of this new player.
Vegas slick has transformed Macau, a town of 11 square miles on China’s southern coastline, into the prime mover of international gaming. Las Vegas Sands was the first American casino to open here, in 2004. Then came Wynn Resorts, then MGM Resorts International. Sheldon Adelson, the chairman and CEO of Las Vegas Sands, stated that he recouped his initial $260 million Macau investment within eight months of operations.
Phua provided a key to this boom. A symbiotic relationship has always existed between casino gambling and sports gambling -- Phua’s clientele was hooked on action, not just on sports. When the Macau Sands opened, according to a casino executive at the time, Phua, with another Hong Kong partner, directed his VIP gamblers toward Adelson’s new operation for a percentage. Phua and his partner eventually established Sat Ieng Company Limited, a junket company, which brings mainland Chinese high rollers to Macau and extends them credit.
Phua became a regular presence on the Macau nightlife circuit. He would play Liar’s Dice -- a game of deception and bidding -- in Macau nightclubs. Phua wouldn’t bet for drinks, as was customary, since he didn’t consume alcohol. For him, it was always high cash stakes. ’He bets on everything,’ says one Macau casino executive, who says Phua was known for risking tens of millions of dollars at a time on futures and securities. ’In the early days in Macau, he would go out with eight black-suited bodyguards to nightclubs. Which is a no-no, which really attracts attention.’
When Adelson’s Vegas rival Steve Wynn opened the $1.2 billion Wynn Macau casino, he naturally offered Paul Phua a 0.1 percent increase over his Sands commission of 1.1 percent to also funnel gamblers to the Wynn, according to reports in the South China Morning Post. In the year that Phua signed with Wynn, Macau casino revenue grew to $6.95 billion, making it the world’s largest gambling market. By 2013, Macau’s annual gaming revenue had grown to more than $45 billion. This growth -- which Adelson and Wynn publicly fronted -- was propelled in part by Phua, who for the moment remained unknown to those located anywhere but at the center of the industry. (Wynn’s and Adelson’s companies declined comment but have denied any association with organized crime in the past; both have partnered with junkets, including those owned by Phua.)
Vue js slot props. ’Sands proved that there was huge demand in the market,’ says Adam Rosenberg, a former head of global gaming for Goldman Sachs’ investment banking division, who is now the managing director of gaming and leisure at Fortress Investment Group. ’Analysts realized that Macau had transformed from a small, risky market into a place of enormous growth.’
As it did so, Phua’s wealth and reputation expanded. ’Everyone’s nervous about talking about him,’ says a Macau casino executive. ’Usually these guys like to brag about who they know, how close they are to these big hitters. But with Phua, they all say, ’Hey, you don’t want to mess around with this guy.’
Macau is full of tough guys, real and self-imagined. After Broken Tooth Koi, the former head of the 14K triad, was released from prison, in 2012, he joined Phua for dinner. The encounter, photographed by intelligence operatives, fed rumors that Phua himself was a high-ranking 14K figure. ’He has triad connections,’ says a Macau casino executive. ’He’s rich. He’s not a triad. Any rich man who knows a lot of triads here can cause harm to you if you say something that they don’t like.’
And this is why Macau itself would always be a risk for investors, since its growth was inextricably linked to organized crime. Macau’s biggest clients -- by a staggering margin -- came from mainland China, where it is illegal to operate a debt-collection company. The junket companies relied on Chinese criminal groups -- the triads -- to collect player debt on the mainland. Without the junkets, there would be no Macau boom. Without the triads, there would be no junkets. Partnering with junkets and major junket figures such as Paul Phua -- as the Western casinos realized was essential to doing business in Macau -- suggested partnering with triads.
Eventually, the U.S. Treasury Department grew curious. While Washington quietly began scrutinizing Vegas operators in Macau, Phua was none the wiser, fueling his own intense personal gambling habit at the enclave’s baccarat tables. A new card game would soon come to his attention, drawing Phua from the shade.HIGHER STAKES, HIGHER STACKS
Baccarat, a game of chance, has long been king in Asia. Poker’s reliance on strategy opposed the Chinese faith in luck. No Macau casino even offered a poker table.
But in 2008, a gaming company, AsianLogic, purchased the Asian Poker Tour (APT). Tom Hall, an English-Chinese bookmaker from Hong Kong, owned a stake in AsianLogic, and he held a position at a coding company that had contracts with IBCBet. ’Paul and Richard [Yong] were the biggest whales in the world,’ Hall says. ’They were losing $30 million to $100 million every year on baccarat. I said, ’Hey, you guys should try poker. You can play other players, instead of losing to the house.’
They didn’t know how to play. In Macau, there was no one to teach them. Phua and Yong gathered a small group of associates for regular games, these experienced gamblers teaching themselves this new game as they went along. ’That first year, if you won, you had to show your hand,’ says Hall, who had a seat at the table. ’People began to understand how to bluff.’ Having gone some distance in understanding poker, they were now ready when the game would come to them.
In 2010, Hall traveled to Las Vegas. There he mixed with top players, including a couple of guys from New Jersey: Tom Dwan and Phil Ivey. A perplexing player who competed mostly online, Dwan danced the edge between genius and fool, playing hands that others would ordinarily discard. Ivey has won 10 WSOP bracelets and more than $22 million in casino winnings. Hall told them about a table in Macau stocked with fresh fish swimming in liquid stakes.
The Macau APT tournament began on Nov. 6, 2010, at the City of Dreams casino. Dwan entered play, but he and Ivey were more concerned with Phua’s private game. ’That first table was Ivey, Paul, Richard, Dwan, Johnny Chan, John Juanda, Chau Giang and myself,’ Hall says.
Matt Savage, who administered the APT event, wrote about the big table on 2+2, a poker portal. He mentioned ’some Chinese businessmen’ and extraordinary pots. Savage went on to write that ’there was about 40 million on the table last night when I saw the game. When I asked Dwan when he was moving here he said, ’very soon.’ By the time Dwan left Macau, he had won, by several estimates, $9 million. The same amount was awarded to the winner of the WSOP main event -- a 10-day slog.
The Macau table appeared at a critical moment. Online poker remained the primary venue for lucrative pots. In 2011, a federal judge unsealed an indictment in a $3 billion case against PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker, the largest U.S. poker sites. The case alleged that these companies had violated the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. The government shuttered the sites, freezing their funds. Many players maintained accounts with these companies, some running into the millions of dollars. That money was gone, along with the U.S. online poker industry.
The effect on the poker community, which refers to that day as Black Friday, was instantaneous. ’All these online players became live players, flooding the casinos,’ says Justin Smith, who has three WSOP final table appearances. With an increasing number of states legalizing gambling, players didn’t have to travel to Vegas, causing the size of pots on the Las Vegas Strip -- and everywhere -- to dwindle. ’Immediately, players starting looking for other countries to play in,’ Smith says.
Macau was far, a whole day by plane from the U.S., with crippling connections. If you could get a seat at Phua’s table, however, the trip was worth the hassle.
Today, the poker community regards Phua as a deep-pocketed, high-amateur player. But during the aftermath of Black Friday, he was a whisper. Accessing his table at the Starworld Casino was a waiting game, which played out across Avenida 24 de Junho at th
https://diarynote.indered.space
コメント