Stanley Ho, the true Godfather

The history of Macau as a gambling destination started in the middle of the 19th century, when it was a Portuguese colony.

In the 1850s, gambling was legalized in Macau by the colonial government as a way to raise money and fight illegal betting activities. The first legal casino, Casino de Macau, opened its doors in the 1960s.

But nothing of the fame and shine that Macau has today would have existed without the appearance in this very complicated picture of Stanley Ho. He came from a very eclectic family: Chinese, Dutch-Jewish, and English.

Ho studied at Queen’s College in Hong Kong, where he was in class D—the lowest level in the school system at that time—because he simply had average results. Even so, later he received a scholarship at the University of Hong Kong, becoming the first class D student ever to be given a university scholarship. His university studies were interrupted by the outbreak of World War II in 1942. After the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, Ho moved to Macau.

Ho started his career in Macau as a clerk in a Japanese-controlled import-export company. During World War II, he smuggled food and rare items across the border into China, and this is how he made his first fortune. With those funds, in 1943 he founded a construction company and a kerosene business.

One of the main driving forces behind the opening of the first modern casinos in Macau was Stanley Ho himself.

He won the monopoly license for gambling in Macau at the start of the 1960s with the help of Henry Fok (politician and businessman), Yip Hon (big bettor), Teddy Yip, his brother-in-law, and other partners.

Casino Lisboa, which opened in 1970, was the first major casino founded under Ho’s leadership.

Realizing the need to attract money from millionaires in Hong Kong, Ho built a port for yachts, so they could quickly reach the casino hotels. At that time, Macau was a Portuguese territory, and only in 1999 it became an administrative region of China.

Thanks to his money, he even managed to enter North Korea, where he made big investments.

As with any successful figure, there was one side that praised and supported him, and another that hated him.

His supporters highlighted prosperity and his ties with the Vatican and world leaders such as Queen Elizabeth and former U.S. president Bill Clinton. His critics pointed to his friendship with the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il and to mafia links, which he always denied. Macau back then was a mix of prostitutes, pawn shops, bandits of every type, and mafia. But Ho ruled with an iron fist, and nobody dared to upset him. The press wrote that his daughter’s convertible was stolen in the streets of Hong Kong and was found parked the next morning in the same place with a note on the windshield: “We are very sorry, Mr. Ho.”

But it was clear that Beijing was not going to allow such a situation forever, and in 2001 it ended Ho’s monopoly and opened the door to the big American chains: Sands, Wynn, and MGM. Since then, casinos grew from 11 to 30 and gaming tables from 339 to 2,762. Revenue doubled and Macau took the crown from Las Vegas. Last year brought $38 billion, almost six times more than its Nevada rival.

He had four wives and 17 recognized children, and he was forced to restructure his business after a family legal battle over his fortune broke out in 2012. Even so, he lived to the age of 98 and stayed in people’s memory with the nicknames “Godfather”, “King of Gambling”, and “Bosman”, but also with his special dancing skills. Without doubt, the history of China and Portugal has a few pages reserved especially for him.