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According to Tony Tong, the CEO of Pacific Net, which sells Baccarat machines, the People's Republic of China who have long been violently opposed to online gambling, is considering legalizing the pastime. Furthermore, says Tong, the government would probably license companies to establish themselves in Macau, which is already the land-casino capital of China.
CNet News, while quoting Tong, reports that the Chinese government now takes significant tax, around 40 percent, on the house winnings in Macau. Online gambling would be a huge boost to government revenues as some of the major companies are most anxious to get into the untapped and very large Asian market.
The Taiwanese group GigaMedia, who bought the Canadian online gambling company Grand Virtual and sells software for poker and other games, is one of the hopefuls who would like to expand into China. They own the FunTown site, which already claims to be the largest Mahjong site in the world. Here players can play for points and prizes.
More than 50 percent of FunTown's subscribers already spend over 100 hours a week on the website. GigaMedia are also behind EverestPoker, a rapidly growing poker site in Europe. The U.K. will likely become a major centre for online gaming as well, said a GigaMedia representative.
Tong explained that Chinese gamblers don't like random number generators and conventional machines. So the latest versions of Pacific Net's Baccarat machines are not just ordinary computerized gaming machines - their machines stream videos of a live dealer dealing live hands over the Internet.
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