Supplementary | Trending to Baccarat

Instead of writing a commentary to Savyseph's webpage Trending to Baccarat, I decided to supplement it.

For most people from the western side of the globe, casino started 1698 in Venezia but betting shops in China had been growing rapidly before recorded history. Dice and pai-gow were the popular games then. Other games were not so easily traceable. The history of betting houses in China is largely based on myth and speculations. In his explanation of pai-gow, Michael Shackleford said that it is the oldest of the casino games that easily pre-dates roulette and baccarat. Pai-gow is similar to baccarat as both games had nine as the high score. Any amount that with a sum that is more than 9 will be subtracted by 10 in order for 9 to be the highest score. With this scoring feature baccarat is easily identified with pai-gow. In pai-gow you get two chances to beat the dealer. In baccarat the second chance is forfeited if there is a natural score to quicken the game. Shackleford calculated that 41% of hands result in a push. Baccarat recognized the letdown of push bets and creatively came up with a high payout in the event of a tie. Pai-gow was addictive because of the skill element to beat your opponent. SavySeph is wise to conclude that baccarat may have developed with inspiration from pai-gow.

Ian Sutton mentioned fan-tan which is in no way similar to pai-gow. Fan-tan overtook pai-gow in popularity due to the high rate of push bets especially when all opponents are equally skilled. This bummer caused people to seek other games where their skills would make the difference and fan-tan was such a game. Chinese had always pride themselves with the skill of the eye. The hand should never be too quick for the eye to avoid being cheated. Fan-tan is a good game to put this skill to practice. The ability to predict the number of straws or beads within a margin of 4 by looking at the stack or pile is the very essence of the skill of the eye in the case of fan-tan. This is the element that makes fan-tan addictive during the days that Sutton was studying.

For Malaysia trending to baccarat already took place in the mid-1980s. In the 70s punter would give an account on how they fared at blackjack. At that time blackjack tables were the majority in the casino. During the mid-80s when I was of age to enter the casino, baccarat tables were became the majority and blackjack tables were almost extinct. The main reason was good players would not like weak player in the same table. Decision of inexperience players to hit or stand may lead to the banker getting the highest score. Shackleford noticed that Caucasian sitting on a pai-gow table would cause other players to leave the table because it is deemed as bad luck. This is just a diplomatic explanation for Shackleford’s ears only. Chinese would know that it is based on the assumption Caucasians wouldn’t know this predominantly Chinese game that well. If they could recognize Shackleford as the Wizard of Odds they would definitely not leave when he sits down.

Supplementary | Casino Accepted Widely

I shall continuing from Xingcai's concluding remark, "the casino is a gun" on Casino Accepted Widely.

You can draw the horse to the water but you can't force it to drink. The Chinese had a similar saying but cows were used instead or horses. Cows are known to be more stubborn than horses. This made me think of the picture below.

The picture was part of a manga from SavySeph's webpage entitled Gambler Jailed for Life which she subsequently pulled out to illustrate the Irish's New Casino Law.

Here is where most people including gambling rehabs bodies or councilors get the wrong idea. It is not the casino or gambling that need to be blame but the individual rotten gamblers who are to be blame. Responsible gamblers with proper self-control do not hand their entire fortune to the casino. They know their limits. Gambling rehabs bodies or councilors should treat the rotten gamblers and not stereotype the casino and gambling. Thankfully, XingCai did not fall into this common misconception.

Commentary | Expense Winning from Gambling

SavySeph is right. Most of use don't know how to spent winnings the right way. Those who had followed the thread would remember that I (faceless) had the same conversation with pinkie and manU two years ago. It is kinda similar to the last of the 36 tip. Check them out on SavySeph's Webpage.

The webpage did cover a few things that we did not touch on. This is a typical last chapter of a trading book. Once you know how to make money, you need to spent it right. Hah, there is no doubt that SavySeph is a trader and a gambler. The first tip is a typical first chapter of a trading book. Now the last tip is a typical last chapter of a trading book. Bravo to SavySeph for sharing her ideas.

Although this may be the 36th Tip SavySeph promised more in an appendix that she had titled as follow.

1. the scheming engineer,
2. the scamming gambler,
3. a Yakuza's death,
4. one lucky shot will do,
5. the magician.

If you like trivial then you should be able to figure it out. In order not to spoil the surprise, I will just make one guess. The initial JJ will be tied to the first item.

Commentary|Firearms at Gambling Shops

Violence at the betting shop had been escalating recently. Robbers are getting more daring by using firearms to rob betting shops.

XingCai pointed out that security measures are bad at these betting shops. In Malaysia nobody even dare think of robbing the illegal betting shops here.

While our betting shops are not physically guarded, they are protected by the triads and gangs. Robbers know they will be hunted down like dogs if they try such a daring venture. In addition, they also keep minimal amount of cash on the premises. I guess the mostly public companies of UK betting shops could not really engage the mafia to protect them.

More on XingCai's Webpage.

Commentary | Gambling Wise is Managing Risk

The is what we at GGC call hit and run. The main problem is we do not know when to run.

We are usually face with the issue that we had not cause enough damage and it is not time to run. For this is always comes down to greed as we always think we done too little damage.

It is not about making enough damages. It is about knowing when it the time to leave. SavySeph had outline situations on where you could not go much further. More on SavySeph's Webpage.

Commentary | Casino Supports Politicians

With the Americans it is the Republican and the Democrats taking turns at the helm. In Great Britain the Tories and the Labor Party alternates to control parliament. Supporting either party does not matter in the long run.

As Malaysian we have the tendency to think politics is dirty. The two cases of casino supporting politicians would easily be interpreted as corruption by most Malaysian.

More on XingCai's webpage.

Commentary | Gambling Warning Signs

There are many warning signs around you in the casino. These sign comes in comes in ways you never imagine. You need to be very observant to spot these signs. Unfortunately by the time you sniff them out, it is usually too late.

I knew that science experiments had develop my skill for this. When I eventually acquired a nook for detecting these warning, I was happy. Later I found out that I had to deal with another problem. More on SavySeph's webpage.

Commentary | The Lonely Turns to Gambling

By this confession "That's because I've got no money, I'm a drunk, I'm feeling not very well and I'm a gambler. I've been living on the street," Sansom had indicated that he had enough of gambling and drinking. The next step is to seek professional help.

From living in a £1m mansion, Kenny Sansom went to being homeless. Many people could help Sansom but his children's support is lacking. More on XingCai's webpage.

Commentary | Gambling Reinforcement

Rules on gambling reinforcement is an essential casino survival skill. It is also part of the Way of the Guerrilla. We need to live to fight again so we try to limit our losses to our bankroll.

Trying to adhere strictly to this had not been easy for most of us. We have internal conflicts to deal with because of our gamblers' mindset. After we had depleted our bankroll, most of us have to fight discontentment. If we failed in this task then we fearfully meet the fire eating session.

Commentary | Gambling Shops Profit Down

The largest bookie shop profit decline by half and justify it by putting the blame on the heat wave the Independent reported on 12 Aug 2013.

The boom times of the past three years with 40% profit jumps are not achievable. Ladbrokes told investors that the FOBT is now performing way below expectation as the heat wave a keeping people indoors.

With revenue declining by less than 10% but profits cut by 50% something is not right somewhere. More on Xingcai's webpage.

Commentary | Gambling Expectation

The concept behind Expecting to Lose is taken from trading. I myself had brought this idea from trading into the gambling table. Traders call it cutting your losses. It involve allocating a small amount to lose in the event that your decision is wrong. Should it turn out that you are wrong then you accept this small loss and try again next time.

If losses are kept small it would be easier to recover later. If you allow losses to run the amount maybe too high and it would require several consecutive winning sessions to cover it back. I am not talking about chasing losses. Traders must try to end the day with profits. Failing which, they must try to end the week or month with profits. If you keep losses small, it will manageable. Other winning sessions will cover it to end your week in the plus territory and there will be no losses to chase.

Since we are coming to the ending of the 36 Casino Gambling Tips, I just like to record a side note on my suspicion that SavySeph is also a trader and gambler like me. I had made this reference a few times in the comments on her blog pages but she had been silent on it.

FOBT Gambling Crime

Betting Shops Violence Spread out of UK

After losing €5,000 a punter took an axe and smashed up 7 machines. The crack cocaine of gambling moved over to Italian soil to cause trouble.

It is only a matter of time that FOBT related violence may get as ugly as this manga.

Would you believe he was let off the hook? Find out why on XingCai’s Webpage.

Commentary | Irish New Casino Law

Would you hold people or machine accountable? People do have a tendency to blame the machines especially in taking away jobs.

This is the situation in the recent decision on the Fixed Odds Betting Terminals (FOBT) in the United Kingdom. More on SavySeph's webpage.

commentary|studentsturntogambling

Save the Student's Survey

Save the Student, a website on money management, conducted a survey on 2,300 students to find out how they fare deal with the mounting cost of living in the UK.

The alarming findings were

• 80% do not have enough money to live
• 20% turn to gambling to resolve money problems
• 25% would consider taking a job in the adult entertainment industry
• 2% thought about going to a payday loan firm.

More on XingCai’s Webpage.

Commentary | Humility at the Table

The 30th tip is about humility. Good old Confucius’s thoughts had been embedded in Chinese even until today. He taught Chinese the value of humility. The irony is Chinese are not good gamblers even though they love gambling.

Humility is the key to controlling all emotions setbacks mentioned in the table below.

Tip C ~ Gambling Emotions	Tip E ~ Gambling Pitfall
Tip 13 ~ Impatience Increase Urge	Tip 25 ~ Rage’s Rampage
Tip 14 ~ Fear Restrain Desire to Gamble	Tip 26 ~ Chasing Losses
Tip 15 ~ Over Confidence Backfires	Tip 27 ~ Post Loss Discontentment
Tip 16 ~ Indecision Causes Regrets	Tip 28 ~ Gambling on Borrowed Money
Tip 17 ~ Coveteousness Increases Greed	Tip 29 ~ Gambling Beyond Your Means
Tip 18 ~ Don't Ignore Intuition	Tip 30 ~ Gambling for the Thrills of Gambling

Commentary | Gambling Essentials

Here are the last set of six tips from SavySeph's 36 Casino Gambling Tips.

• Maintain Humility Always
• Expect to Lose
• Reinforcement is Unnecessary
• Observe Warning Signs
• Prudent Cash Management
• Expense the Winnings

Two of these are in common with our Way of the Guerrilla.

Gambling for Trills

Gambling can sidetrack you into acquiring the thrill of having a stake. You will meet your doom if that happens. As we say in GGC “no medicine can save you” if you continue on that path. This is the gambler’s highway to hell.

Re-examine your goals and priority when you get derail. This will help set you right again.

Commentary | Legalized Loan Sharks

In Malaysia we are familiar with dwelling places being splashed with red paints as a gift from the loan sharks to humiliate the dwellers to pay up their dues. They would also send people to their clients' work place to tell everyone about their lavish spending habits for those with credit cards debts or their landu attributes for the incorrigible compulsive gamblers.

Since loan sharks are illegal in Malaysia they operated on a very low profile and use the method of a credit card debt collector. They certainly would not accidentally beat their client to death as they used to in the long past because that will not recover their loans. Mental whipping in the form of humiliation in every conceivable form is the usual routine these days.

Here I go again with my schadenfreude tendencies. I think loan sharks being illegal here is bad but I have not seen the UK. These guys are legal but they operate above the law. They really hit below the belt by approaching those who are drunk. There is more on XingCai's Gambling Tales.

Commentary | Gambling Beyond Means

From the last blog, I mention that our GGC thread had been around in a general affair forum since 2007. Not only have we received request to help recover money they assign for other purpose but also to recover money they had borrowed. Some were even desperate enough to admit they borrowed from loan sharks hoping to get our sympathy to put some urgency to their cause. All we could offer were words and nothing more. SavySeph would just ask them to go to the rehab centers. We should be doing that from today since we had YC (our in-house rehab worker).

Commentary | Desperate Gamblers

As a gambling-fan topic on a general affairs forum, GGC's activity had drawn a lot of attention. With the thread opened in 2007 and continues to remain active until today, many readers in the forum think we are some invincible gambling gurus. It is common for us to hear people come to the thread seeking our help to recover money they can’t afford to lose as if we have some miraculous ways to do it.

SavySeph discuss the process of gambling when you are desperate for money. As a seasoned gambler, she covered the typical BR of people who had gamble to solve their financial problems. It is similar to the various sorry cases who had come to our thread for help. We can only point these people to the Way of the Guerrilla and tell them gambling must be free from cares.

Commentary | Gambling Addicts to Hell

XingCai’s article “Addicts To Hell Is One Goood Article. It Opens Up And Speaks To The Whole Realm Of Human Need”, John Wakefield's comments at facebook on 2 Aug 2013 at 9:56am. I love the way XingCai attacked Singapore’s Casino Policy. Perhaps it is my schadenfreude nature to see Singapore come under heavy criticism. I am sure Malaysians are laughing their ass off to find Singaporeans being more landu than us. They are so desperately landu until they can use their mum’s identity card to enter the casino. When the price is right I am sure they will sell their mothers to get a chance to gamble.

Commentary | Gambling Discontented

Many times we are hesitant to leave the casino. We think that we just need that one more chance and we can even things up. We have not willing surrendered to the session. We can’t accept the defeat.

We still harbor discontentment in our hearts. “Who care”, you will say but little did you realize that the “big ear hole” or the loan shark is watching your every move. He is just waiting for the right time to make his approach to maximize his sale.

Commentary | Casino Cheated 500k

Two con-men from New York Leonard Hu and Hung Leung collaborated with two dealers Jian Ng and Bong Louie from Norwich to cheat the Mohegan Sun casino. They had scammed $500,000 by using edge sorting over five months period. If edge did not come into the limelight due to Genting’s stupidity for being caught by the same trick, the scammers would likely to have continued undetected. Here is XingCai’s Analysis of the event.

Commentary | Even Nations Bow to Casino

Genting started with only one miserable casino hall some 50 years ago. Today it houses resort facilities and several massive casino halls. It is a common joke among many Malaysian as well as GGC members to say they had contributed to the development in Genting. The casino resort's contribution to the economy over the years had been so significant that its founder had been conferred "Tan Sri" by the Malaysian Regent.

XingCai's Nations Bow to Casinos looks at Cyprus having this aspiration as they planned to build a casino in the next 12 months. While Genting's development was contributed by gamblers over the bad and good economic cycles, XingCai raised an important question on the ability of bankrupted Cyprus to pull it off.

XingCai's Landu Tales

I had decided to blog on XingCai’s Gambling Tales. Over the time that XingCai had been blogging on Google’s Blogger I found her content would be of interest of GGC members. Many times we get spammer dropping gambling news on or thread which are of no interest to gamblers. Details such as casino’s extraordinary profits or operations reports are stuff we do not even bother to take a second glance at the heading. News of this nature would only interest the economist and equity market traders. Another turn off would be the introduction or review of online casinos. These are no news to us since most of us had googled them up already.

GGC is interested in Battle Reports (BR), gambling strategies or landu stories. The term landu is not listed in our terminology page because it is a common Chinese word. At our localized Malaysian forum this word need no introduction. Coming on to Blogger our audience is more international and the word landu will now be defined here. Landu is a compound word consisting two words; lan and du. Du is translated as gamble or gambling. Lan had various usage but in the context of landu it means compulsive behavior or fan as in obsession. Depending on context landu can be a “gambling fan” or the more negative connotation “incorrigible gambling addict”. Malaysians would use a coined up English word rotten-gambler to describe the latter. Due to the tonal nature of Chinese, lan has the same sound as rotten or broken.

XingCai’s Gambling Tales could actually be renamed Landu Tales. From XingCai’s comments on SavySeph’s 36 Casino Gambling Tips, she strikes me as a newbie gambler. After seeing her Home Page, I learned that she aspire to be a gambling counselor. I believe she gambled for the sake of understanding gamblers so that she will be of relevant help to the rotten gamblers. I now begin to understand her switch from gambling-fan to anti-gambling voice. At any which case XingCai’s Gambling Tales would certainly be of interest to GGC.

Commentary | Chasing Losses

In GGC we had heard people chase losses, yet some of us still continue to do it. Chasing losses is only attractive to a newbie. Some of us who had chalk up catastrophic losses would tell the thread they want to join QGC but they would not take the first step to see YC (our in-house rehab worker). This is all about pride. They do not want to admit they need help but their action tell everyone that they are just amateurs.