Casinos Royale

Hugh and Colleen Gantzer take you through some of the best gambling dens in the world

The Pope has a casino. And if that gives a jolt to every good Roman Catholic, like us, that’s exactly what it’s meant to do. The Casino of Pope Pius IV is recognised as a little gem of Renaissance garden art. In those stately days, a casino was a small casa, in which people sat on pleasantly warm days to relax and enjoy the beauties of a well laid-out garden. The story of the evolution of the casino from His Holiness’s summer house to the dingy, dodgy, den beloved of some Bollywood directors is a fascinating tale.

The first casinos were rooms near a theatre. Here people could relax with friends after an evening at the playhouse. They had a few drinks, a bite to eat, enjoyed conversing with their social circle and occasionally, played cards. It was a very select affair.

London’s oldest gaming house, Crockfords, had retained their clubby atmosphere when we visited it some years ago. William Crockford was an 18th century slum kid turned dandy, thanks to his amazing ability to assess odds.

In 1828 he opened his elegant club in St. James. Understated grace was still the hallmark of Crockfords. We had quails’ eggs with our Chateau Yquim, the Scottish salmon was presented for our inspection before it was grilled, and there were absolutely no pinball machines. People who drove Bentleys and wore hunting pinks preferred black jack and American roulette, and no alcohol in the gaming rooms. Crockfords is at the violet end of the casino spectrum: very pucca-pucca. But some of the younger blue bloods, occasionally known as the Sloane Rangers, didn’t feel comfortable with the senior members in Debrett and Burke: those Who’s Whos of the True Blues.

For them, the company that owned Crockfords took over the premises of the erstwhile Playboy Club in 45 Park Lane. It wasn’t quite the Hugh Hefner scene with over-endowed and under-dressed bunnies but it was fairly close to it. And it was appreciably more glittery than Crockfords. Many of its denizens seemed to be the sort of people one would see sipping toddies in a ski hut, flying to the Bahamas for a week; folk who were driven by an urge to see and be seen. There were gaming rooms on the first and third floors and a Soft Gaming Room on the fourth floor with TV, back gammon or a friendly game of cards between people who have met but now want to get to know each other better.

Still very much a clubby sort of place but with a little more glitz and a shade, but only a shade, more pushy than old Crocky’s down the road. Appropriately it’s called the International Sporting Club.

The mecca of all casinos, however, does not pretend to be anything but a gambling house: though it is in a building which could well pass as a very expensive, but rather ornate, spa. Monaco’s casino at Monte-Carlo looks like an enormous icing-sugar confection. This is where you are likely to see suave James Bond types, slinky females, hawk-like Arab billionaires and Middle Eastern bankers in tinted spectacles. Its Holy of Holiest is the Salles Privees, decorated in an extravagant neo-Baroque style that seems to flaunt Oscar Wilde’s dictum: ‘Nothing succeeds like excess’. But, as if to soften its assertively gambling image, it is also the home of “l’Opera de Monte Carlo” and the ballet theatre “The Foyer de al Dance”. Incidentally, Monegasques, the natives of Monaco, are not allowed to gamble but then they don’t pay any taxes either. This archetypal casino does, clearly have a certain soft side in spite of the fact that it expects its patrons to be fairly formally dressed.

Over the years, the hoity-toity British and European codes of conduct gave way to more relaxed mores. The entertainment associated with them became less sophisticated and more plebeian, casinos stepped out of the drawing room and into the playground and disco. When we visited the fabulous Sun City, built in the crater of an extinct volcano in South Africa, we found that gambling was just another form of entertainment. We walked across the Stone Bridge of Time, which trembled and hissed and steamed in an artificial earthquake, and stepped into the caverns of the Entertainment Centre. Here, on the floor of an enormous man-made cave, were batteries of clicking, tinkling, ringing electronic gambling machines, casinos and enough restaurants, fast food outlets and bars to keep hordes of punters fed and spirited all through the windowless, clockless hours or days. The gamblers here were essentially fun seekers, not desperately determined fortune hunters with a steely glint in their eyes. Much of the same sort of cheerful people in a ‘let’s-give-it-a-bash’ holiday mood filled the gambling halls in Malaysia’s Genting Highlands. In this predominantly Islamic country, Muslims are not, officially, allowed to enter the casino, and formal dress includes a batik shirt. During weekends and holidays, Genting and its casino are filled with Singaporeans who have driven across from their rather straight-laced Island Republic. But since Buddhist, Hindu, Shinto, Confucian and Christian Singaporeans look no different from the Muslim ones, particularly when they are dressed in batik shirts, the ‘Muslims prohibited’ rule remains largely for the statue books.

Many Chinese, however... along with many Indians....are serious gamblers. And the more focused they are the more likely they are to head for Macau, once a Portuguese enclave in mainland China. It was still under the Iberians when we first visited it and walked into its multi-storeyed Casino Lisboa.

Here the emphasis was on gambling and only gambling, and the lure of Lady Luck made democrats of all players. Millionaires rubbed shoulders with rickshaw pullers, self-proclaimed and perfumed fidalgos mingled with stocky boat-people faintly aromatic of fish. The compulsive spur of greed made equals of them all. Today, however, much of that has changed. According to the Government of Macau, this 25.4 sq. km Special Administrative Region “offers the largest variety of casino games anywhere in the world... (such as) blackjack, baccarat, pai kao, boule, fantan and pacapio (and) an array of slot machines (called ‘Hungry Tigers’ by the Chinese) which are computer linked for super jackpot pay-outs”. At last count there were at least ten casinos including those in the hotels, one in a converted ferry and the Kam Pek which is the only one to accept the local currency called the pataca: in all the others you will need HK$.

You won’t, however, need dollars if you fly over to Nepal and play in any of the casinos in their five-star hotels: Rupees are gladly accepted. As more and still more casinos were established in Nepal, they began to acquire a certain upscale look but the original Casino Nepal, in the old Soaltee Hotel, probably set the tone for the Bollywood versions of casinos: mafioso-looking characters in white suits and shades, heavily made up women in glittering mini-dresses, and assorted chuckers out in bulging muscles and striped tees with ostentatious gold crosses dangling around their necks and a single-phrase dialogue: “Yes baas!” Not that Casino Nepal was quite that ominous but it certainly made no attempt to replicate either the sophistication of Crockfords or the razz-matazz of the Las Vegas money spinners.

We do, however, know of one casino which is both sophisticated and fun-filled. A few months ago, in Goa’s Panaji, we put on our glad rags and boarded a ship tied up to a wharf on the Mandovi River. The good ship ‘Caravela’ and its crew is ready, in all respects, to cruise out to sea. In fact it is a cruise ship with a swimming pool, dance floor, sun deck, luxury state rooms, kids’ entertainment centres, a bar and an elegant dining room with an imaginative buffet spread. It also has a casino with windows... no sequestered cavern, this... and just that touch of glitter which gives it just the right Las Vegas touch without any of the brash and brass garishness which is the hallmark of that frenetic city. Entrance charge to the Caravela is Rs 1,200 per person and this includes dinner, drinks, entertainment and entrance to the Casino. Chips however, are extra. If you purchase Rs 4,500 worth of Chips at the entrance then there is no entrance charge and dinner and drinks and entertainment is free. Smart young croupiers handle the roulette tables and the cards at games such as blackjack, stud poker, punto banco and flash which is our Indian version of three-card poker. All tables are covered by security video cameras, watched over by supervisors, overseen by a tall Pit Boss who walks energetically, endlessly, around the tables. Everything is covered by the watchful gaze of the Casino manager, that affably formidable Australian, Kevin Willcocks, with 17 years of experience in Casinos.

Judging from the folk on board during our long starlit cruise, the Caravela attracts a growing number of very special people. Not, necessarily, the so-called Page Three types but singles, couples and families who are comfortable with their achievements and their bank balances. They don’t need to flaunt their success but they do want to have the occasional flutter at the tables with people they can relate to and in the privacy that they feel they have earned.

And that, come to think of it, is the essence of a great casino experience.