Cambodia Casinos & Gambling

Cambodia is a kingdom in Asia with legal gambling for foreign visitors. Gambling in any form by citizens was outlawed in 1996 but the law is loosely enforced. The first license was granted to NagaWorld in 1994, which at that time occupied a boat on the Tonle Sap river in the country's capital of Phnom Penh. Today, the brick and mortar NagaWorld is the country's largest casino with over 75,000 square feet of gambling space holding about 1,000 gaming machines and nearly 200 table games. There are roughly 25 casinos operating in Cambodia with frequent upstarts and closures making that number fluid.

The casinos and gambling games of Cambodia

A great number of the casinos in operation today are located in urban centers such as Poipet (Paôy Pêt) and Bavet but nearly as many are located within meters of border crossings on the Cambodian/Thai border, with some along the Vietnamese border as well. Special border crossings are established allowing Thais to enter the country to gamble without immigration procedures, with additional security on the interior preventing them from going deeper into the country without due procedure.

Some casinos are operating in high tourist traffic resort areas such as SihanoukVille with Queenco being the newest and largest facility there. One of the nicest “border-town” casinos is actually a 4.5 star sea resort across the border from the southernmost finger of Thailand called Koh Kong Resort.

Many casinos do not report the actual number of gaming machines and tables but the ratio is about 4:1, much lower than in western casinos zones given the Asian preference for table games, especially baccarat and roulette. A good variety of regionally popular games are to be found at the border casinos and more of a Las Vegas or Macau style spread is to be found at the larger, urban casinos.

Cambodia Casinos and Gambling in Summary

Although while gambling is illegal for Cambodian citizens there are reports of local denizens swarming casinos on the evening security shift change. Vietnamese are not allowed to gamble in their own country so many come to Cambodia at convenient crossings to find their games. To our knowledge no legal casinos exist in Thailand for citizens or tourists so a large percentage of border casino customers come from Thailand with O-Smach Resort drawing about 2,000 visitors per day.