Crown Casino

Crown Casino is the largest casino in Australia and it relocated to the Crown Casino and Entertainment Complex at Southbank in 1997. The casino is owned by Publishing and Broadcasting Limited (PBL). It is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week except on Christmas Day, Good Friday and Anzac Day. On these days Crown is closed from 4am and re opens 12 noon.

History

Crown Casino opened in 1994, and relocated to a new complex at Southbank in 1997. It was originally founded, owned and run by Lloyd Williams until the Packer takeover by PBL in 1999.

Games

Amongst other games, Crown provides the 6 main casino games of Blackjack, Craps, Pai Gow, Poker, Baccarat and Roulette but it was also the founder of an electronic version of Roulette known as Rapid Roulette. Rapid Roulette is essentially the same as traditional roulette but rather than players placing bets on a layout, all gaming takes place on a personal electronic touch screen connected to a central roulette wheel. The benefit of this is that the player has easy access to the entire betting layout, and due to the electronic nature of the game, it is both fast and accurate. Rapid Roulette has been in use for several years, and recently Rapid Bigwheel and Rapid Sicbo have been developed. As well as Caribbean Stud Poker on the main gaming floor, Crown has also long offered varieties of poker including Texas Hold'em. The Crown Poker Room has recently grown with the increased popularity of poker and now encompasses a large separate space in the Crown basement known as the Poker Room. Crown casino has 2500 slot machines on the casino floor, with values of 1 cent, 2 cent, 5 cent, 10 cent, 20 cent and 1 dollar available for patrons to play. The slot machines at Crown are made by Aristocrat, VLC, AGT, IGT, Konami and Stargames, with 2 Dollar machines being introduced into the VIP area.

Government oversight

The regulator overseeing the Casino's activities, and to whom grievances can be addressed to is the Victorian Commission for Gambling Regulation. The VCGR regularly monitors the casino's operations making sure Crown conforms to Victorian Gambling laws.^[1] Several times Crown have been charged and fined for breaches of the Casino Control Act 1991.^[2]

Rewards programs

The Crown Casino have a rewards program called "Crown Club" where by playing both poker machines and table games earn the player points on the card for credit or other bonuses.^[3]

References