Casino gaming is more popular today than it has ever been. Once seen as a leisure pursuit for the rich and famous, a combination of technological advances, legal reforms and changing attitudes has made casino gaming accessible to anyone.
The general trend over the past two to three years has been towards online casinos. They bring plenty of benefits in terms of convenience, choice of games and special promotions. A glance through a listings page like gambleonline shows just how much choice is out there. But that’s not to say online platforms have rendered land based casinos obsolete.
On the contrary, getting into casino games by playing online only makes players all the more tempted to visit a real casino and try out their new hobby in traditional surroundings. Where the best casinos are concerned, for “traditional” read “big.” A successful casino is not about understated subtlety. On the contrary, it is often a case of the bigger the better. Here, we visit three of the biggest land based casinos from three very different corners of the world.
WinStar – The World’s Biggest Casino
We could quote square feet of gaming space, but it is hard to really visualize 200,000 compared with 400,000 or 600,000. Instead, think on this. The WinStar Casino has a gaming floor that is a mile long. From a purely architectural perspective, that’s hard to get your head around. The casino is separated into nine different gaming plazas where you’ll find more than 100 table games, 8,600 electronic games, 100 poker tables, bingo, sports betting and more.
So where is the WinStar? It’s not in Vegas or Reno. It’s not even in Atlantic City. It is, in fact, in Thackerville, Oklahoma, just yards from the Texas border and built, of course, on Chickasaw tribal land.
The Venetian – everything’s bigger in China
If you’ve ever visited The Venetian in Las Vegas you’ve probably been impressed by the scale and ambition of the place, with its indoor canals and gondola rides. Well, the Venetian in Macau takes its design cues from its Nevada namesake, but on a larger scale. In fact, you could fit the Las Vegas Venetian inside the Macau one almost four times!
As well as the Venetian style – there are gondolas here too, just like in Vegas – there are an incredible 800 gaming tables offering all the old classics as well as just about any new casino game you can imagine.
Rio South Africa
The remaining three of the world’s five biggest casinos are also in Macau. It is a genuinely unique venue and has not lacked investment since returning to Chinese rule almost 20 years ago.
At number six in our list is the largest casino in the southern hemisphere. Previously known as Tusk, the casino has been the focal point of Klerksdorp since it opened in 2006. As with all super casinos, there’s a strong emphasis on the table games and terminal games, plus the small matter of 8,500 slots.
