Poker Slums

The world may have been reeling from the news that some of Dubai’s strongest financial institutions could not pay their debts, but this did not halt or slow down the opening of the Vegas CityCenter.  The complex opened in December and is jointly owned by Dubai World and the MGM Mirage.

The CityCenter has some hailing it and some cursing it.  The resort has 4,004 rooms and a new casino that many say will attract the tourists back to the city.  Others, however say that the CityCenter is just introducing a glut of rooms to an already over saturated market and will just further drive down the value of rooms in the area.  Because the hotel is so vast, it has meant a 4% increase in the number of available rooms in Vegas, which is a huge amount of extra rooms appearing overnight!

The CityCenter has cost a whopping 8.5 billion US Dollars to build and for many it is a bit of a last grasp at pulling the market back up for the ailing region.  It certainly is a big bet, a big bet for Vegas and a big bet for Dubai.  The recession has seen a drop in the number of visitors to the city as people have opted not to take a holiday or to avoid gambling as a means to conserve their cash.  This has obviously been bad news for the Vegas casino companies as many of them did not foresee the coming recession.

At the end of last year Dubai hit the news for all the wrong reasons having announced a whopping 60 billion debt.  A six month delay has been sought by Dubai World in paying it’s creditors the nearly 60 billion it owes.  This debt was racked up during it’s own real estate bubble that was popped due to the global recession. The CityCenter project cost 8.5 billion US Dollars to build, but has been valued at a mere 4.88 billion US Dollars by external evaluators.  This is definitely a gamble a lot of people will be hoping pays off.

Take one less gamble out of your online poker game, make sure you’re getting cash back at all your favourite games including PKR Poker and Absolute Poker.

Comments are closed.