澳門 notes: why do some people like to gamble?

Hi guys, in this continuing series of stories from my most recent trip to the Far East, I'm going to talk about my time in Macau today. From Shenzhen, I took the ferry to Macau and spent three days two nights there. It was my first time in Macau and I thoroughly fell in love with the place. There are really two sides to Macau: firstly you have the old Macau on the north side that has a land border with Zhuhai, China - this side of Macau does resemble Hong Kong a lot. Then you have the casinos on the Cotai Strip on Taipa island, which couldn't be more different from the Macau on the other side of the bridge. I took the time to explore both sides and was fascinated by the contrast. I am trying to decide which side I liked better: I truly enjoyed exploring the older side of Macau, but the hot weather did take its toll on me and I was struggling with the heat. I did walk through many of the more famous casinos on the Cotai Strip in air-conditioned comfort, but after a while, they all seemed to blend into one and if like me, you're not a gambler, there are still plenty of other fun things to do. I did go and see the House of Dancing Water whilst I was in Macau which I thoroughly enjoyed. 

But let me begin by talking about gambling: I walked through quite a few casinos in Macau - the Parisian, the Venetian, City of Dreams, the Grand Lisboa and a couple of others whose name I can't even remember. I was quite relieved that there was no dress code as I was dressed for the hot weather and they were always full of tourists no matter what time of the day or night it was. I am not a gambler, I wasn't once tempted to even gamble a few Macanese Patacas just because I happened to be in Macau. It is not so much a moral issue I have with gambling - but rather, it is merely a question of statistics. Let me give you an example: one of the most popular games I saw in the casino is craps, there are various different forms of it but the basic principle is that the gambler bet on the outcome of the roll or a series of rolls of the dice (traditionally played with two dice, but in Macau I saw a version with three dice). There is no skill involved because you're merely trying to guess how the dice will land, it is a game of chance where luck determines whether you will win or lose. I actually stood and watched a man lost a lot of money on this game because (surprise, surprise) he couldn't predict the outcome - I played along with him silently in my head and realized that I was equally hopeless at trying to guess something as random as the rolling of the dice. Except of course, he lost an eye-watering amount of real money, whilst I was merely an observer. I walked away thinking, "this stupid game sucks, I'm so glad I didn't spend any money here."

There's so much control you relinquish when you engage in a game in a casino like that - sure there are some games like poker whereby there is an element of skill involved, but as a gymnast, I like feeling in control. So when I am at training and I am struggling with a skill, a coach or fellow gymnast can point out to me what I am doing wrong and I can then fix the problem, so I can then perform the skill a lot better. Whereas in the world of gambling, even the poker player has to make the best of the cards he is given, he has no influence over that part of the process and it is just so much easier to win if you are dealt the right cards, as the odds are in your favour. Likewise, as a salesman, I like feeling in control of the sales process. I may not be able to close every deal I work on, things do not always work out - but at least I am able to retain a fairly high degree of control over the entire process and if there are any problems, often I am in a position to at least try to help solve those problems in order to help salvage the sale. Thus that's why I don't like the idea of gambling - it's not like I am handing over to another person like the croupier at the casino. No, the croupiers has little control over the cards they deal or where the ball may land on the roulette wheel. Well, I don't like depending on my luck like that - perhaps that's my pessimism talking, but I prefer to depend on my skill and losing sucks, especially at a casino. And even in my short time in Macau, I saw quite a few people lose a lot of money. I do wonder what they get out of it?

But as you look across the skyline of Macau from the top of Macau Tower, you can see how casinos dominate the economy here - I recommend going up the Macau Tower just at dusk, then you get to first see the skyline in the daylight and then observe how it slowly transforms as night falls and the bright neon lights come on. Clearly, loads of people love gambling and it is enough to sustain the economy in Macau. But the question I am struggling to answer is this: why do so many people like gambling? It is clearly very popular, but what is the appeal behind it? Why do people go to the casino and spend so much time and money there, despite knowing that the house always wins? Indeed, when I was a child, my father would go out and get lottery numbers every week and he would often bet of things like our postcode, birthdays or phone numbers and his favourite, betting on 8888. I used to roll my eyes in disbelief because he would never win anything and I thought it was a complete waste of money, but if it brought him some joy in the process, I learnt to keep my mouth shut and not question his motives. I have talked about how I automatically rejected a lot of things my parents embraced in my previous post - well, maybe I have rejected the concept of gambling because my father actually likes it.

Not that he's a big gambler, but he does like going to Genting and spending hours in the casino there. I really don't get it - he once raved to me about how he got a free Chinese steamed bun (大包) and coffee when he was at the casino in Genting, as if that meant he was being treated like VIP there and it made him feel special. I rolled my eyes in disbelief and asked him how much money he lost at the casino and he evaded the question, "有输,也有赢啦" (I lost some, I also won some) - let me translate that for you, that means whilst he did enjoy the thrill of winning once in a while, but overall, he lost a lot of money. My point is, with the amount of money he lost at the casino, he could have bought a very nice Chinese meal in the hotel and certainly enjoyed more than just a 大包 and a cup of coffee. That's exactly what I did that evening in Macau, after having walked through the dazzling casinos and taken a lot of selfies on the Cotai Strip, we headed to a lovely Chinese restaurant and enjoyed some traditional Cantonese cuisine. Hey, at least when I order dishes off a menu in a Chinese restaurant, I know exactly what I am getting and what I have to pay for it, I don't mind spending good money on a fine dining experience like that - I just hate the uncertainty associated with gambling and even the offer of free food and drink just isn't enough to entice me to want to gamble. Yet I could tell that my dad had clearly enjoyed his time in the casinos in Genting - his joy is genuine, even if I can't understand why he had such a good time. Maybe he just liked being treated like a VIP by the staff at the casino offering him free food and drink - but then again, I often get that kind of treatment whenever I go to a fine restaurant or posh hotel, I don't need to go to a casino to be treated like a VIP.

But moving beyond the excellent service that you undoubtedly get in these casinos, I have a different theory about why some people may enjoy gambling. Let's take a game of craps for example, when you're betting on something as random as the outcome of the roll of the dice. It doesn't matter whether you are a bus driver or a university professor - the odds of you winning are the same because it is completely dependent on luck. Someone with a phD in mathematics can analyse the data and work out the probability of you winning at such a game, but even then, no amount of knowledge can influence the outcome of the next roll of the dice. Likewise, if the same bus driver sat down at the poker table next to the multi-millionaire, neither of them would have any influence over the cards they are dealt - the element of luck in a vital part of the game, as the croupier shuffle the deck of cards before dealing, so the cards you are dealt in the game of poker are always random and has no correlation to anything you have done in your life. It is perhaps one of the only (if not the only) places in the world where no amount of wealth, social status or education can help you and the playing field is well and truly leveled for once. So if I was a taxi driver struggling to make ends meet, I would be naturally attracted to such an environment because I can leave my problems, my worries and debts at the door of the casino, knowing that I have as much chance of winning as the son of a billionaire especially at games like craps, where the outcome is totally random and all you need is some luck to win - there is absolutely no skill required with some of these gambling games.

I have discussed how life is incredibly unfair in a recent post: yeah, some people have a brilliant start to life because they have wonderful, caring parents who ensure they get everything they need to become successful. Then you have people like me who get the opposite and have the odds stacked against us from the beginning - like poker, it is still possible to win with a poor hand, but damn it would have been a lot easier had the odds been in my favour. I once worked for a man whose grandfather was the ex-president of Colombia - talk about having the odds in your favour. Having to battle against the odds to win is always an uphill struggle. I was very lucky to have been able to get a good job and do well for myself today, but there are plenty of others who have had a terrible start to life and are stuck in very lowly paid jobs all their lives, they were born very poor and will probably die just as poor. I observed this first hand in Shenzhen, when I saw the labourers on the construction sites working under extremely harsh conditions for around £3 / S$6.30 a day.  But in the casino, Lady Luck doesn't care who your father is, she doesn't care if you have millions in the bank or are very deep in debt, she doesn't care if you have a phD from Cambridge or if you're barely literate, she doesn't care if you are old or young, gay or straight, she doesn't even care if you're a good father or a serial adulterer, none of that matters to her. So someone like myself may feel quite uncomfortable with that situation - outside the casino, I clearly have an advantage over the taxi driver with my education, work experience and connections. But if I sat down with a bus driver in a casino, his odds are as good as mine - so clearly, that's a situation that would please the taxi driver but not someone like me.

So if you already have the odds clearly in your favour outside the casino, stepping into the casino where lady luck levels the playing field is clearly going to make you uncomfortable, the same way it made me unwilling to gamble in Macau. But if the odds are stacked against you in real life, then clearly visiting a casino and letting Lady Luck level the playing field for you against everyone out there probably seems like quite an appealing idea. Well that's my theory anyway, the only catch in that theory is that if a rich man loses a large sum of money at the casino, he probably would just shrug his shoulders, blame it on bad luck and walk away from it because he can afford to waste that kind of money at the casino. But the poor man cannot afford to squander away a large sum of money like that if his family needs that money to pay the rent or his children's school fees: so by that token, surely the casino should be the rich man's playground and poor people ought to stay away, right? Well that's the impression any one of these casinos in Macau would give you the moment you step in there - even just the lobby of somewhere like the Parisian would make you want to stop and take quite a few selfies. But take a closer look at the people gambling in there, they are not all millionaires - no, many are ordinary tourists who couldn't possibly afford a night at Macau's more expensive five-star hotels, they look more like quite ordinary folks who probably would get into huge financial difficulty  if they lost a lot of money in the casino. Yet somehow, the lure of the casino, the chance to get rich quick if Lady Luck smiles on you is too tempting to resist and so there they are. By that token, the irony is that the very people who can least afford to gamble are the ones who are most drawn to it.

Should you visit Macau if you have no intention to gamble? I definitely think so, there was more than enough to keep me fascinated and I didn't even get to see everything marked on my tourist map of Macau. The food is excellent and if you visit in the winter months, the weather would be far more comfortable. I loved the way the city is bilingual - signs are in Chinese and Portuguese even if only 0.6% of the population actually speaks any Portuguese, but somehow they have clung on to that language despite hardly anyone ever speaking it.  But even if you don't want to gamble, I think walking through the casino and seeing people gamble is still quite interesting - I suppose for me, I was just wondering what was going through their heads, what makes them think that they can beat the house and even break even, never mind win big? Do they genuinely believe that they are going to be lucky? What do you think? Have you been to Macau? What do you think about Macau? Did you enjoy yourself in Macau? Are you a gambler - do you enjoy gambling? What is the appeal of casinos? Are you tempted by gambling in a casino? Leave your comments below and many thanks for reading.