Macau is down on its luck as a gambling mecca, but casino tycoon Stanley Ho still has plenty of cash to splash around.

I missed this when it first came out but Ho a few days ago plunked down $200,000 for a 2.2 pound Italian white truffle and had an Italian chef accompany it on a first-class air ticket from Italy to Macau. That's Ho ho-ho-hoing on the videoscreen above after winning the truffle auction.

The truffle was the biggest found in Italy this year.

Stanley outbid a bunch of Dubai sheikhs for the truffle at an auction that was a televised link-up between Scottish chef Gordon Ramsay’s London restaurant Murano, the Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi, the Exedra Hotel in Rome and the Gran Lisboa Hotel in Macau, which Ho’s company owns.

Stanley’s plans for his little trifle are unknown but presumably he’ll have shavings of it on a memorable plate of pasta. I hope he enjoys it. He paid a lotta patacas for it. Patacas are what Macau people call their currency.

While he savors that delectable forest tidbit, his fellow casino tycoons are choking on their food.

Last month, the Las Vegas Sands Corp., one of the biggest investors in Macau's development, mothballed the half-built 6,400-room Macau Venetian resort, leaving 11,000 construction workers out of a job and casting a shadow over the gambling Mecca’s future.

Just a couple of days ago, another casino operator, Melco Crown, which is partly owned by Ho’s son, began offering unpaid leave to its employees.

Some of the hard times in Macau come from new policies in Beijing, which is putting the kibosh on the ability of mainlanders to visit Macau, the only legal venue for casinos in China. Mainland Chinese travelers to Hong Kong can no longer visit Macau using the same visa. Since Oct. 1, residents of neighboring Guangdong province have only been allowed one visit to the city every three months.