The recently-approved baccarat side bets ‘Monkey no Monkey’ and ‘Pairs+’ are now on main gaming floors and high-limit areas at Sands China Ltd’s Cotai casinos as well as its Macau peninsula property, Sands Macao, showed GGRAsia site checks on Thursday.
Marketing slogans on LED screens and printed leaflets on gaming floors – in Chinese and English – described the fresh side bets as “Pioneered by Sands”.
GGRAsia understands the bets had been introduced a few days earlier.
As of Thursday, ‘Monkey no Monkey’ and ‘Pairs+’ were on many operating gaming tables on main floors and high limit areas of Cotai’s The Londoner Casino, The Parisian Casino, The Plaza Casino, and The Venetian Casino; as well as at Casino Sands at Sands Macao, on the city’s peninsula.
Grant Chum Kwan Lock, chief executive and president of Sands China, mentioned new baccarat side bets during the first-quarter earnings call for the United-States-based parent, Las Vegas Sands Corp (LVS), though he didn’t identify them by name.
Mr Chum stated on Wednesday’s call: “We have introduced some new side wager options in Macau over the past week.”
Though he added, referring to LVS’s Singapore casino operation: “It remains true that the take up of side bets, especially as a percentage of total wagers, is much higher still in Marina Bay Sands than in Macau.”
Mr Chum further noted regarding the “take-up of side wagers in Macau” there was a “progressive trend upwards”.
He stated: “I think the introduction of these new side wagers that we will be implementing now and in the next few months will further enhance that propensity.”
Live-dealer baccarat side bets have helped Macau’s casinos in terms of house edge since their market-wide adoption starting in 2024. The extent of lift though can vary across properties due to factors including customer mix and each property’s market positioning, industry observers have previously suggested to GGRAsia.
The ‘Monkey no Monkey’ bet has two tracks of play, which respectively offer a 1 to 1 and 50 to 1 payout. The Pairs+ side bet has three tracks of play, which respectively offer the payout of 3 to 1, 30 to 1 and 300 to 1.
From GGRAsia’s Thursday checks, At the Sands China’s Cotai properties, wagers on either ‘Monkey no Monkey’ or ‘Pairs+’ at Sands China’s Cotai properties were starting at HKD100 (US$12.8) for main-floor baccarat. In high-limit areas those side bets were starting at either HKD300 or HKD500.
By comparison, on Thursday the minimum bets on main-wager options for mass baccarat were ranging between HKD500 and HKD3,000. High-limit main bets mostly ranged between HKD2,000 and HKD5,000.
That day at Sands Macao, bets on either ‘Monkey no Monkey’ or ‘Pairs+’ were starting at HKD50 or HKD100 across the main floor and high-limit play zone. Minimum bets on main-wager options there ranged between HKD500 and HKD2,000.
As of GGRAsia’s Thursday checks, the new side bet baccarat options were not available at Sands Macao’s “Gold Fortune High Limit” room, which features exclusively live baccarat play.
At the Sands China properties visited by GGRAsia, the two new side bet wagers were shown on table layouts that included previously-introduced side bets, i.e., ‘Lucky Six’, ‘Small 6/Big 6’, ‘Lucky 7’, ‘Small 7/Big 7’, and ‘Super Lucky 7’.
