Chinese New Year Gambling Traditions
The Chinese are often seen as a superstitious bunch, warding bad luck off with seemingly unusual actions. Gambling around the new year is no exception to the rule.
Specific traditions that have been built on for centuries are often still acted out by the more mature and superstition bound gamblers. Here are some examples as to the lengths they go to to ensure a big win:
- Religion is often practiced before going gambling. The gambler would pray and/or make an offering to their God(s) to try and sway their all powerful deity’s benevolence in their favour.
- Switching on all the lights before gambling is apparently a sure fire way of getting luck on your side. Although, we’re not sure if that luck would subsidise the electricity cost.
- If you are one of those people who believe in the power of lucky pants this one may not seem so strange to you. Wearing red underwear (or undergarments) is apparently very lucky.
- This one is probably the strangest one of all. Some Chinese people believe that behind every gaming table lives a ghost. To ensure that ghost helps them with their monetary goals, people would come up to the table and feed the ghost with human food such as sugar. If the ghost isn’t fed, it can become frustrated and stop you from winning. Well, the ghost theory would at least explain why our chips seem to go down so quickly.
With many cultures that believe in superstitions, there are also things you shouldn’t do under any circumstances.
- Don’t dare even whisper the word ‘book’ when gambling. In chinese, the word book sounds very similar to ‘lose’.
- This is a good tip even without superstition governing it, don’t hit or touch people’s shoulders when they’re gambling.
- We think maybe the house spread this one around, but don’t count your wins or losses during gambling. It will apparently end in loss.
These actions may seem odd to us but hey, they may be really effective. Try giving them a go in the New Year and tweet us at @LesCroupiers to tell us if they work.
