Author Archives: admin

Officially known as the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, the Borgata, in Atlantic City, New Jersey was, when it launched in 2003, the first property of its kind to open in ‘America’s Favourite Playground’ since the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort in 1990. Originally a joint venture between the MGM Mirage Company and Boyd Gaming, the Borgata was, effectively, the first Las Vegas-style property in Atlantic City; it became the highest-grossing casino in the municipality in 2005 and has remained so ever since.

The Borgata casino floor, which covers 161,000 square feet, was originally designed with an emphasis on gaming tables, rather than slot machines. Traditional favourites, such as baccarat, blackjack, craps and roulette, occupy most the gaming tables, but are supplemented by a variety of less popular games and over 3,000 slot machines. The poker room, which originally featured 34 tables, was subject to a major expansion in the Noughties and is now the largest in Atlantic City. Several high-profile tournaments, including the World Poker Tour (WPT) Borgata Poker Open, are staged at regular intervals throughout the year.

The Borgata appears unwilling to rest on its laurels; following an investment of $12 million on a sports betting lounge and entertainment facility in June, 2019, the casino authorities announced on further investment of $14 million on renovation of the lobby and hotel suites less than three months later.

City of Dreams is situated on the so-called ‘Cotai Strip’ in the Cotai section of Macau, an autonomous territory that occupies a small peninsula on the south coast of China and two offshore islands. Owned and operated by Melcro Crown Entertainment, City of Dreams originally opened in phases between June and November, 2009, but a fifth, 40-storey hotel tower, named ‘Morpheus’, opened in June, 2018.

Like its main competitor, The Venetian Macao, which stands directly opposite, City of Dreams is one of the so-called ‘mega-casinos’ – which include luxury hotel developments, gourmet restaurants and round-the-clock entertainment – that have replaced traditional gambling houses in Macau in recent years.Both City of Dreams and The Venetian Macao are Las Vegas-style resorts, but City of Dreams is generally considered the more stylish of the two.

The casino floors at City of Dreams, collectively, cover 420,000 square feet, or 4 hectares – in other words, roughly the size of four football pitches – and offer over 500 gaming tables and over 1,500 gaming machines of one form or another. Table games include baccarat, blackjack, craps, poker – Caribbean Stud and Three Card, but not Texas Hold’em – and roulette. Slot machines, with minimum stakes between $0.02 and $5, number in excess of 1,200 and are supplemented by electronic gaming terminals offering variations of video poker and the ubiquitous ‘Big Wheel’ among other games.