The Montreal Gazette
A Montreal software company is gambling that the business model of
online poker will propel a Chinese parlour game to the same scale of
financial success.
Dynasty Gaming Inc., which develops and licenses an online, multiplayer
version of the ancient game of mah-jong, is organizing the first
official mah-jong tournament in Macau, China.
But not before marketing its chief product to a massive customer base in that country.
"What made poker such a success was TV," said Dynasty Gaming chief
executive Albert Barbusci. "We're the first player to launch a
land-based tournament of this scale."
The tournament, to be held in December, will be televised in China in February.
And to make it a sure thing, Barbusci partnered with China's biggest name in gambling and entertainment, the Ho Group.
"Mah-jong is much larger than poker. You have billions of people in
Asia playing it," said Barbusci, who estimates mah-jong's worldwide
popularity over poker to be tenfold. "People play mah-jong in China
from the age of 7 the way we play Monopoly," he said.
Mahjong is played by selecting and discarding ornate tiles to create sets.
Dynasty Gaming, a publicly traded firm since 2001, made its gaming
bones by quickly licensing its Mahjong Mania software to major online
bookmakers and casinos around the world.
North Americans are catching on to the game, Barbusci says, but it's most popular in Asia.
The company gained attention when it was signed by Ladbrokes, the
world's leading online casino operator, and last month by Golden
Palace, an Internet casino made famous for its publicity stunts.
Mahjong Mania is the first aggregate player, cash-wager version of the
game, in which players compete with each other online by betting with
credit cards.
Barbusci wants to take the game to the huge Asian market, but with a
local business model: the use of pre-paid cards. His firm partnered
with Junnet, the leading pre-paid card distributor in China, and will
use the Ho brand for marketing muscle.
Starting this summer, players can simply buy the cards at Internet
cafes and bookstores and play their credits online at the company's
website, named Ho Majiang.
"The player then has the chance to climb skill ladders and participate in tournaments," Barbusci said.
In fact, some seats at the World Cup of Mah-jong in December will be
reserved for top online players. The rest will be buy-ins, just like
televised poker tournaments.
If the big event is a hit, Dynasty Gaming and the Ho Group will host
local tournaments in major Chinese cities to eventually become a
pan-Asian competition, Barbusci said.
The company has its licensing arm in the Turks and Caicos, where
gambling laws are more lax than in Canada. It expects the Chinese
operations to turn a profit by the fourth quarter of this financial
year.
Barbusci was hesitant to project actual earnings, since the venture itself is a bit of a gamble.
"It could be an instant hit, but maybe not," he said.
Yesterday, Dynasty Gaming shares rose 13 cents to $1.20 on the TSX.
Mah-jong, a game played with ornate tiles, used to be an illegal
gambling game in China until 1998, when it was sanctioned by the
government and turned into a national sport.
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Game combines skill, calculation and luck
Mah-jong requires skill, calculation and luck.
There are several variations of the game in which the amount of luck involved varies.
It is played with 144 tiles with suits of bamboo, circles, Chinese
characters, flowers, seasons and cardinal directions that are shuffled
and formed into a square structure called a wall.
The object is to collect 14 tiles grouped into four sets of three tiles
and a matched pair. Like gin rummy, the game is played by selecting and
discarding tiles until a player attains a winning hand. It is played
over 16 rounds.
Combinations of tiles earn different points, which makes it a popular
game of chance. Points can be multiplied if a player has a rare tile,
for instance, or has four of a kind.
