Las Vegas resident Doyle “Texas Dolly” Brunson will visit the city that is challenging Vegas to be the Gaming Capital of the World–Macau, China.

Poker pro Brunson is set to participate in the Macau Main Event, a poker tournament on the Asian Poker Tour (APT), the APT announced.

The tourney will be held August 27-31, 2008, at the Galaxy Star World Hotel and Casino in Macau, the APT announced.

Also scheduled to participate in the tournament is Todd Brunson, the APT announced.

Todd is Doyle’s son and also a poker pro.

Macau, like Hong Kong, is officially classified by the Chinese government as a “Special Administrative Region” or SAR, and is therefore permitted to conduct certain types of commerce–such as gambling–that is illegal in the rest of China.

While Hong Kong has no casinos, just horse racing, Macau has numerous large casinos, including some owned by American companies.

The Macau casinos, mostly very new, are intensely marketing themselves to the world, and a visit to one of them by the world’s most famous poker player will only add to the publicity.

Don’t sell “Texas Dolly” short, however, he doesn’t mind being used.

Because even if he loses in the Macau Main Event, he wins.

He’s likely receiving an appearance fee from the casino and/or APT just to show up, a fee probably bigger than the annual salary of 99% of America.

In addition, Doyle will be doing a book signing while in Macau, giving him a chance to peddle hundreds if not thousands of copies of his book on poker and rake in even more cash.

With the book sales and appearance fee, “Texas Dolly” will make a boatload–and if he finishes in the money in the tournament, that will just be extra chop suey on the chow mein.

(E-mail Tom Somach at tomsomach@yahoo.com.)