Las Vegas Sands founder Sheldon Adelson heads the annual Asian Gaming Power 50 for the eighth time in nine years. (Full disclosure: As editor at large for Inside Asian Gaming, which publishes the rankings, I’m a member of the selection panel for the list.) Like the rankings, Adelson often generates controversy and provokes divergent feelings, but nearly everyone agrees he belongs at the top of the region’s gaming heap. Venetian Macao and Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands speak for themselves as extraordinary creations, reflecting favorably on their creator. Yet, it also seems utterly absurd that a guy in his 80s who can’t speak a word of Chinese and comes from Boston – further from Macau than any major city on earth except Buenos Aires – with a personality at least that far from Asian ideals such as humility and harmony, nevertheless remains the most powerful person in Asian gaming. Adelson’s status highlights his unique combination of vision and guts.

When Macau invited proposals for three casino licenses in November 2001, there were plenty of reasons to steer clear or, at the very least, hedge your bets. The local gaming business was populated by underworld figures known for gunfights on downtown streets in broad daylight. Macau’s gaming oversight wasn’t up to global standards, posing a threat to casino license holders in more advanced jurisdictions like Nevada and New Jersey, where MGM got into hot water over its Macau partner. Two years earlier, Portugal had handed Macau back to China, and, Beijing’s influence raised questions about the business climate for foreign investors.

These legitimate concerns influenced casino companies’ responses. Las Vegas Strip leader MGM Mirage, Caesars, doing business as Park Place then, and Mandalay Bay mounted indifferent bids. Harrah’s, on the verge of becoming the world’s largest casino company by number of locations, decided not to bid and passed again in 2006, when it could have bid for a subconcession; that company is now called Caesars and working through bankruptcy.

Adelson saw Macau’s problems, but in far greater relief, he saw the billion-plus people across the border. From the very beginning, LVS approached Macau not on the scale of the pre-liberalization market but the mainland China market. In the early 2000s, downtown Macau had many empty buildings from 1990s real estate bubbles. That could have provided sufficient space to double or triple Macau’s pre-liberalization casino revenue. Instead, after opening Sands Macao in May 2004, in part to satisfy the government’s desire to introduce casino completion quickly, Adelson focused on a barren patch of landfill dubbed Cotai between the outer islands of Coloane and Taipa.

The 83-year-old billionaire has led the way in transforming Cotai with investments totaling $14 billion. Macau’s version of the Las Vegas Strip now has seven integrated resorts with 21,000 hotel rooms – 13,000 owned by Hong Kong listed LVS subsidiary Sands China – more than 1,000 shops, 150,000 square meters (1.65 million square feet) of convention and meeting space plus five theaters and arenas. This new casino cluster helped Macau’s gaming revenue grow 20 times larger.

When Singapore offered casino licenses, Adelson’s rival Steve Wynn abandoned his bid, complaining the government tried to micromanage the project. It’s unlikely Adelson has any more patience with meddlesome bureaucrats than Wynn, but he could see past that annoyance to the opportunity to build an integrated resort in what’s one of the world’s richest local markets as well as a major business, transit and tourist hub. In Macau and Singapore, that focus on the big picture combined with confidence that LVS can deal with any obstacles at least as well as any rival. In other words, someone will get the license, so it might as well be us.

At the opening of Parisian Macao (more on that in an upcoming article) a couple of weeks ago, Adelson talked about potential projects in Asia beyond Macau. “In a competitive market, you build a theme resort,” such as Venetian or Parisian, he said, while “in a monopoly, you build something purely iconic,” such as Marina Bay Sands. I’d never heard that stated as a principle of design or business, and I’m convinced that if Marina Bay Sands and Venetian Macao switched places, they’d still be awfully successful.

The Innovation Group Chairman and CEO Steve Rittvo had never heard the concept before either but strongly agrees. “Where you have a monopoly or very limited oligopoly, the iconic structure will be causal in growing visitation to the market,” the gaming and leisure consultant says. “In a competitive market, the total heft or presence of the casino cluster is what generates the visitation, and it is enhanced by the marketing programs of multiple facilities. The themed facility serves two functions: it adds to incremental market growth by having something new to see but a more important angle is it allows for growth of market share by offering a unique and differentiated project. In a place like Macau gaining market share is important given the number of competitive facilities. In Singapore, with two facilities, it is more important to grow the total market.”

Adelson’s assertion seems to have been a tidbit of visionary wisdom. Just as impressive, he delivered the view with overwhelming self-confidence and conviction. Adelson may not always be right but he’s never in doubt. Combine belief and brains with the opportunities of Asia, and you’ve got a winning hand.