Casino Growth in Asia Brings Worries About Gambling Addiction
By Claudia Blume
Hong Kong
26 December 2007
As more casinos open in Asia, and online gambling increases, mental health experts and governments are worried about addiction to gambling. Claudia Blume reports from VOA's Asia News Center in Hong Kong.
Wednesday is horse racing day in Hong Kong. All over the city, people crowd into one of the many gambling outlets of the Hong Kong Jockey Club to place their bets.
Serious-looking men and a few women stand around studying the odds of the day's races in newspapers and on TV screens.
For most people here, gambling is just a form of leisure and entertainment. But for some, it becomes an addiction that ruins their lives.
One of them is "Tony", a government official in his forties, who declines to give his real name. He says betting on horses started out as a pastime. He won a few times at first, played more and more often and couldn't stop once his lucky streak was over. Tony continuously lost money until, four years ago, he had amassed a debt of more than $100,000.
"I had to sell our apartment," he said. "My wife and I and our two daughters had to move in with my father-in-law, where the four of us shared one single room."
In Hong Kong, where betting on horses and football is legal, people have one of the highest per capita betting averages in the world, about $2,000 a year.
A study by Hong Kong Polytechnic University shows almost four out of five people in the territory participate in some form of gambling. That includes betting on horses or football, lottery games, casino gambling in neighboring Macau - but also mahjong games with family and friends.
People in Hong Kong are not the only Asians who love to gamble. Psychologist Samson Tse is a founding director of the Center for Asian Health Research and Evaluation at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He says gambling has strong roots in Asian culture, especially Chinese, and reflects the world-view of many people in the region.
"For example the notion of fatalism, the notion of luck and so forth," he explained. "We tend to think about life as a form of gamble and push our luck to see how far we can go. We work very hard, we try to survive in a very hardy environment - so anything that can help us improve our lives, anything that can help us to have fast, quick-fix solutions, we all will try."
Tse says while the participation rates of Asians in gambling activities is high, there is no evidence that more Asians are addicted to gambling than non-Asians. But he says this is partly due to psychologists' Western methods of evaluation, which may not be applicable to Asians. In addition, many people in Asia may be too ashamed to reveal they have a gambling problem.
Tse says it is hard to make exact predictions, but it is very likely more people will get addicted in the future, as an increasing number of gambling outlets open up in the region.
"Macau is one of the examples. And we know for a fact from the public health research - when people have increased level of participation, that usually leads to the increase in the scale and also the severity of pathological gambling," he said.
The number of gambling outlets in Macau, Asia's gaming capital, has more than doubled to 27 in the past few years. The city's revenue from gambling was seven billion dollars last year, making it the biggest single gaming market in the world.
Inspired by Macau's success, other Asian countries are jumping on the bandwagon. Singapore ended a decades-old ban on gambling two years ago, and will have two casino resorts by 2009. Japan and Taiwan are considering legalizing casinos.
And construction began earlier this year on a four-billion-dollar luxury gaming resort in southern Vietnam.
According to investment bank Merrill Lynch, casino companies are expected to spend as much as $71 billion in Asia over the next five years.
Janet Wong, a counselor at the Caritas Addicted Gamblers Counseling center in Hong Kong, says an increasing number of people who seek help at her center are gambling in Macau casinos. She says, in many cases, it is their family members who call, because they are at their wits' end.
"Some loan sharks escort the gambler from Macau to Hong Kong and make a phone call to the gambler's family members and ask them to help the gambler pay the debts," she said. "Usually, they don't have any information how to deal with the situation."
Samson Tse says what particularly worries him is that in some countries, such as South Korea, casinos are integrated with or close to resorts where families spend their holidays. In other countries, for example in New Zealand, gaming machines are set up in family restaurants.
"The problem of that, or the challenge of that is almost normalizing gambling to such an extent that it becomes a very daily, ordinary activity," he said.
Even more dangerous, he says, is the increasing trend of Internet gambling in the region. In South Korea, for example, according to South Korea's Cultural Information Center, about seven percent of the population is addicted to online gambling.
Addicts can gamble 24 hours, seven-days a week - without any social interaction that may stop them from doing so.
A number of governments in the region have started to address the problem. Two years ago, the first Asia Pacific problem gambling conference was held in Hong Kong. Singapore hosted another problem gambling conference last July.
South Korea provides educational material and school counseling in an attempt to stop the country's rampant Internet and online gambling addiction. In Macau, Singapore and Hong Kong, problem gamblers can call hotlines and seek help from several counseling centers that have opened in the past few years.
www.voanews.com
Michael Vick, 2010 MVP?
Evaluating the chances of the quarterback making an NFL comeback.
By Peter Keating
Posted Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2007, at 6:14 PM ET
In just eight months, about the amount of time it takes the BALCO grand jury to order lunch, federal authorities busted Michael Vick for helping run a dogfighting ring, extracted a plea from him, and delivered him to U.S. District Court Judge Henry Hudson. On Monday, the judge sentenced Vick to 23 months in prison. Now, sports fans can move on to the topics we really care about. Not the plight of the dogs, naturally, nor the question of whether Vick is a psychopath or a hunting aficionado gone somewhat overboard. Rather, when will Vick play again in the NFL? And will he be any good?
Vick fans are already noting that since he began serving his sentence before Thanksgiving, and good behavior can shave 15 percent off a federal sentence, he could be a free man by the time training camps open in the summer of 2009. There are a couple of big problems with that scenario. Vick still faces state felony charges in Virginia, where he could get up to 10 more years in prison and there is no possibility for parole. (He will stand trial in Surry Circuit Court next April.) Moreover, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell may be in no mood to let Vick play again. Under the league's personal conduct policy, just consorting with gamblers can earn a player a lifetime ban from the NFL. Remember that Vick has admitted not only that he helped kill six to eight pit bulls, but that he provided money for betting on dogfights.
Let's assume, though, that Vick walks sooner rather than later and that the commissioner doesn't stand in his way. Despite all the current talk about how Vick has wrecked the Falcons, and what a PR nightmare it would be to have him around again, and how nobody would want to entrust their team to a dog killer, it's a sure bet that some NFL franchise will give him a chance. Vick's combination of arm strength and running ability-the talents that media types like to roll into the loathsomely all-purpose word athleticism-are a package the world hadn't seen before he arrived. Athletes at the extreme right end of the talent distribution curve never run out of chances.
But Michael Vick will be at least 29 when he leaves federal prison in Warsaw, Va. And the NFL is too fast, too precise, and too violent for a past-prime body and an out-of-practice mind to pick up where they left off after an absence of two (or more) seasons.
Vick's 23-month sentence puts him in an unusual category. Most players who commit crimes skip serious jail time, unless their acts are horrific enough that they're sent away for so long that they have no hope of returning. There aren't too many prison terms for athletes falling in between those served by, say, Jamal Lewis (four offseason months for trying to set up a cocaine deal) and Rae Carruth (18 to 24 years for conspiracy to murder his pregnant girlfriend).
A few athletes, in football and other sports, have missed enough playing time for it to be disruptive to their lives but not enough to wreck their careers immediately. (I'm not considering guys like Jim Palmer, Bjorn Borg, and Mark Spitz, whose comebacks were more stunt than career revival.) Almost none made successful comebacks. The great exceptions: Muhammad Ali, who lost three peak years to legal battles after refusing induction into the Army in 1967 and then came back as good as ever, and Michael Jordan, who dabbled in baseball for a year and a half before returning to dominate the NBA in 1995. But if you're not one of the two greatest athletes of the last century, history says that you'll likely lose a step if you sit out a year. Miss any more time, and you'll lose your job.
Ricky Williams led the NFL in rushing in 2002. A positive test for marijuana and a burning desire to study something called Ayurveda led him to retire for the first time in 2004. He came back in 2005 and ran for 743 yards. After another flunked drug test sent him to the CFL in 2006, Williams returned to the Dolphins in the middle of this season. He rushed six times against Pittsburgh last month, then hobbled away injured.
Cornerback Dale Carter, who made four Pro Bowls in the '90s, was suspended for the entire 2000 season after missing drug tests. In 2002, he managed to land a seven-year, $28 million contract with the Saints but was suspended again soon afterward and played in only 29 more games. Paul Hornung, a great short-yardage running back for the old Packers, averaged 4.5 yards per carry from 1957 to 1962. Then the NFL suspended him (along with Alex Karras of the Lions) for a year for betting on games and associating with gamblers. In the three seasons after Hornung came back, he rushed for just 3.4 yards a carry.
It's much the same in other sports. Ryne Sandberg, a baseball Hall of Famer based on what he accomplished before he retired in 1994, was a below-average player when he returned to the Cubs in 1996 and 1997. Mike Tyson wasn't the same after he got out of prison.
There were failed comebacks in the early days of pro sports, too. Home Run Baker, underappreciated today as one of the greatest third-basemen of all time, left the major leagues twice, once in 1915 over a salary dispute and again in 1920 when his wife and daughter contracted scarlet fever. Each time he returned after a year off to play with the Yankees; he was an effective but no longer dominant hitter from 1916 to 1919 and wasn't much good from 1921 to 1922.
Of course, many players lose entire seasons to injury and come back strong. But someone like Francisco Liriano-the Twins phenom returning this year from Tommy John surgery-or Greg Oden-the Blazers rookie now recovering from microfracture surgery-can focus his entire life on rehabbing and will enjoy state-of-the-art facilities while he does so. Prison may let Michael Vick build discipline, but it will rob him of the chance to practice with and perfect his timing against the best football players in the world.
And not to kick a man when he's down, but while Vick is in jail, his skills will be diminishing from a level that wasn't as high as many people believed. On New Year's Day 2003, when Vick took the Falcons to Green Bay and upset the Packers in the playoffs, it was easy to believe he would soon explode into greatness. Instead, that game was his peak moment.
Vick made three Pro Bowls from 2002 to 2005 and even drew one MVP vote in 2004, the year Peyton Manning threw for a record 49 touchdowns. But beyond his ability to dazzle, he has completed only 53.8 percent of his pass attempts and averaged just 6.7 yards per pass attempt over his career. His career high in touchdowns is 20 (24 including rushing TDs). Vick has paved the way for a new generation of mobile quarterbacks in the NFL. But if you turn each of his stats down a notch, you get Kordell Stewart.
Vick will be older and thicker in 2009, and the league will be bigger and faster. It's probably a good idea for him to get some job training while he's in prison. Either that, or he could declare for the United Football League draft.
2007 Washington Post.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
All rights reserved
NFL Football Betting Thanksgiving Triple Treat
Thanksgiving weekend is all about appreciating what we have, and of course good Turkey. For NFL Football fans there's even more to feel good about as this weekend sees three huge games and Online Gambling Insider, the independent betting portal, has all the odds, news and betting tips.
(PRWEB) November 21, 2007 -- Thursday through Monday this week is without a doubt one of the most active betting weekends on the annual sporting calendar. The three games on the day draw more attention than any others outside of Super Bowl.
All the action gets underway early on Thanksgiving Thursday and will run well into the evening. The 9 and 1 the Green Bay Packers meet the 6 and 4 Detroit Lions to get things going on Turkey Day. But the action doesn't end on Thanksgiving Thursday, which is merely a kick-off for what will be one of the biggest wagering periods of the year. There is football all day Friday, all day Saturday, all day Sunday and Monday Night finishes off a marathon weekend.
The big focus will however be on the the three feature matchups on Thanksgiving Thursday, with most of the country making time to watch football while enjoying the food and family. "Football on Thanksgiving is the best thing to complement family, friends and the Turkey and we're here to give betting fans all the latest odds for these mouth watering matchups," says Ryan D, founder and editor of Online Gambling Insider.
Thursday's games see some of the biggest names in the sport like Romo and Favre do battle and here are some brief previews (more information will be available on the day in the portal's NFL Football Betting section).
NFL - Thursday, 12:30pm (EST) Green Bay at Detroit (FOX Network)
It's been a while since the last late season game at the SilverDome in Detroit. Both teams are looking at the playoffs and the division championship, with Green Bay holding the edge. This should be one of the best matchups of the week. The Lions impressive offense will look to outgun the gunslinger, Brett Favre. Bookmaker.com has the Packers as the favorite at -190.
NFL - Thursday, 4:15pm (EST) NY Jets at Dallas (CBS Network)
Dallas are getting one of the weaker teams in the AFC. Still, this is an exciting Cowboy team with some swagger, who are looking for homefield advantage come playoff time.
NFL - Thursday, 8:15pm (EST) Indianapolis at Atlanta (NFL Network)
This game looked great until the Michael Vick saga. It also doesn't help that Indy seems to produce the goods against NFC teams, particularly teams from this division, as they are 6-1 against the spread in their past seven matchups vs. teams from the NFC South and 11-3 against the spread the last 14 times they've played an NFC team.
Online Gambling Insider is an independent online gambling portal that offers a number of unique services to the online gambling community. The site reviews and analyses the best football betting sportsbooks and provides a unique $1000 player deposit guarantee.
(c) Copyright 1997-2007, Vocus PRW Holdings, LLC.
Online-Gambling-Made-Easy Adds Two New Sportsbooks
Online-Gambling-Made-Easy has added two new award-winning Sportbooks to its line-up.
Miami, FL, November 02, 2007 --(PR.com)-- Online-Gambling-Made-Easy has added two award-winning, player-favorite Sportsbook sites to its line-up: The Greek Sports Book and Diamond Sportsbook International.
The Greek Sports Book is a must-have for the smart veteran sports investor who enjoys following the odds almost as much as betting them. The Greek offers more betting options and offers them faster. The site also offers a great choice for those who just want to have a worry free, fun experience. "Sweat the game, not the payout." The Greek Sportsbook aims to give their customers the fastest withdrawals in the industry. Payouts are processed within 24 hours by a company that carries an A+ financial rating.
Consistently rated one of the top online sportsbooks by players, punters can find betting lines on football, basketball, baseball, hockey, soccer, golf, tennis, motor racing, boxing, horse racing and more. Sports betting options include spreads, totals, moneylines, team totals, quarter lines, half-time lines, futures, props, and much more. Players can also view up to the minute sports betting information as a guest.
Diamond Sportsbook International is one of the few major online sportsbooks that provides safe, legal and secure online gambling on NFL football, college football, horse racing, basketball, MLB baseball, hockey, NASCAR, boxing or any favorite sporting events from any location in the world.
Diamond Sportsbook offers a state-of-the-art online sports betting center that makes it fast and easy to bet on sports. Winning wagers are credited to a player's sports betting account moments after the game concludes. They offer same-day payouts to anywhere in the world. When a player bets on sports with Diamond Sportsbook and Casino, he has one account number for sports betting in the sportsbook, online casino gambling, thoroughbred and quarter horse racing, and their automated online office pools system.
Every day of the week there's a special promotion going on.
Online-Gambling-Made-Easy.com may not be the last gambling site you visit, but it should be your first.
Media Contact:
Bob Lane
E-Mail: Online72@ Online-Gambling-Made-Easy.com
Web Site: http://www. Online-Gambling-Made-Easy.com
John McEnroe says betting on sports has 'gotten out of hand in general'
John McEnroe believes questions about match-fixing will continue to dog Russian Nikolay Davydenko and the rest of the tennis world until the dust settles from the ATP's investigation into betting irregularities.
But the outspoken star-turned-TV-analyst also feels concerns over tainted outcomes due to gambling are part of a larger issue that all sports are facing.
"I think it's a far bigger problem in other sports to be honest," McEnroe said in an interview Friday. "There's people betting incredible amounts of money on football games and baseball, way more than tennis matches. You'd think there are a lot more people out there who would try to influence players into doing something because there's a lot more at stake.
"I just think the betting thing has gotten out of hand in general," added McEnroe, who is slated to play an exhibition match with Mats Wilander on Nov. 4 at Casino Rama outside Orillia, Ont. "These stupid fantasy leagues, people betting so they'd have an interest in a team they'd had absolutely no interest in otherwise, it's just gotten totally out of hand."
McEnroe's comments came shortly after the ATP issued a US$2,000 fine to Davydenko, the world No. 4, for a "lack of best effort" in Thursday's 1-6, 7-5, 6-1 loss at the St. Petersburg Open to Croat Marian Cilic, who is ranked 102nd.
The top-seeded Davydenko won the first set in 27 minutes but drew a rebuke from chair umpire Jean-Philippe Dercq for his play in the third set. Davydenko complained about a problem in his legs after the match. McEnroe says such warnings from umpires are rare but not unusual as players wear down from the grind of a demanding season.
"I've heard that a couple of times, the umpires have said to a player he's tanking," said McEnroe. "Now, this is an added dilemma because of what happened this summer with him. Usually if you're at the 35th week out of 40 or 45, you're so burned out maybe you shouldn't be playing the tournament in the first place. ...
"I'm just making a guess here but he was up ... and blew it and he was so upset with himself that he lost his edge."
The ATP had previously spoken to Davydenko as part of its investigation into an August match he played in Poland that prompted online gambling site Betfair to void wagers because of irregular betting patterns. After winning the first set of that match 6-1, Davydenko withdrew against 87th-ranked Martin Vassallo Arguello in the third set because of a foot injury.
Now, McEnroe acknowledges, all of the Russian's actions on the court will be viewed through that frame with any injury instantly coming into question.
"You want to feel that guys are going out there and playing," he said. "And unfortunately with Davydenko, either way you look at it, it's bad."
McEnroe promises fans who watch his coming exhibition match with Wilander will have no questions about the on-court effort. At 48, McEnroe is intent on proving that he can still put on a show, both with his game and his infamous temper.
That means the audience is likely to be treated to some vociferous arguments on disputed calls and perhaps a racket smash or two.
"Basically yeah," he said sheepishly. "These people usually try to put it in my contract. In the old days I got fined if I yelled at an umpire, now I get fined if I don't. It's sort of sad in a way. ...
"I like to go out there with the idea that I can play at a high level for a certain period of time. I take pride in trying to do that, especially when I'm going to play a match somewhere I may never play again and never played before."
Bjorn Borg, Ivan Lendl and Jimmy Connors were McEnroe's chief rivals during his stellar career, with Wilander a notch below. In 13 matches at Grand Slam events and Davis Cup ties, McEnroe holds a 7-6 edge over the now 43-year-old Swede.
One epic meeting between them came during the deciding match of a Davis Cup quarter-final in 1982, which the American won 9-7, 6-2, 15-17, 3-6, 8-6. It's a match McEnroe still remembers vividly.
"I played two matches in excess of six hours, that one with Mats and another with Boris Becker," he recalled. "We ended up winning the Davis Cup so that turned out to be a pivotal match. I got in a winning position and then let it slip away and then it just became this uphill battle in a seemingly never-ending match.
"It was amazing that after almost 6 1/2 hours I pulled it out, not feeling all that fresh for the next couple of days after that. We were both pretty young at the time and it was probably one of if not our most memorable match."
The struggle at Casino Rama won't be nearly as long.
"At this age I try to maintain a level of fitness that will allow me to go as hard as possible for as long as possible," McEnroe said. "Basically two hours or less."
Copyright (c) 2007 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
Former offshore betting boss says athletes make lousy bettors
They say doctors make the worst patients and, according to former offshore betting pioneer Steve Budin, pro athletes make for lousy bettors.
Budin's SDB Global set up operations in Panama and then in Costa Rica and grew to 200 incoming phone lines servicing 5,000 clients. It made him rich but the U.S. justice department stepped in and Budin surrendered upon returning to his homeland. He got off with a fine and now lives in Miami with his wife and three children.
Today, the 36-year-old Budin is president of Sports Advisors, an online handicapping concern with sites such as sportsinfo.com. He is also an author, taking readers behind the scenes of a sometimes sordid business in his book "Bets, Drugs and Rock & Roll" that was written with Bob Schaller.
Athletes are the biggest sucker bettors of them all, Budin says from experience.
In Budin's SDB Global days, Jaromir Jagr, then a Pittsburgh Penguins star and now captain of the New York Rangers, phoned in bets on NFL and NBA games and approached the process with much the same attitude as other high-profile athletes with whom Budin dealt.
"They all thought they knew more about sports than the oddsmakers," Budin says in his book. "In addition, they all had the kind of built-in, competitive nature that led them into always doubling down in an attempt to get even, which is a bad betting strategy.
"This made them really good clients."
Budin estimates that in the NHL "at least 20 to 25 players are gambling - at least, if not more." That would amount to only 2.9 per cent of NHLers.
NHL player contracts contain a clause prohibiting betting on NHL games, and NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly has stressed the league's seriousness of dealing with gambling-related issues in the past.
"We take this seriously," he has said. "Gambling culture is something we educate our players about extensively."
Daly says the league has no comment on Budin's book or interview comments but questions the credibility of it all.
Jagr has addressed his gambling, acknowledging in 2003 that he paid off a US$450,000 debt to a Belize-based betting company.
"I made mistakes," Jagr explained four years ago. "I just wasn't smart.
"It was stupid. It wasn't illegal and it was five years ago. Everything was taken care of in 1999."
Budin's offshore business accepted bets from Jagr around 1996 and 1997.
"He would gamble about $10,000 a game," Budin said during the interview. "He could gamble six or seven games on a call."
Jagr loved to bet football, and he loved calling in his bets right from the locker-room, Budin's book states.
"You could really tell that he got a huge kick out of calling in under his special code name "975 JJ" and being involved in something a little dangerous," the book states. "Thank God he had a good day job because he couldn't win a freaking bet to save his life."
Jagr never had a winning week with his bets, Budin wrote.
Jagr's agent J.P. Barry did not return calls requesting comment about the book.
Jagr's betting is an old story and "I was just adding some colour to it," says Budin.
The section about Jagr takes up only a few of the 254 pages in "Bets, Drugs and Rock & Roll." It's a colourful story that includes shady characters identified only by their given names and inducements to keep government officials from harassing offshore entities.
Budin had some words of advice for bettors.
"If you're going to bet on your own for purposes of making money you're a moron," he said. "If you do it for entertainment . . . you're right on target.
" To add joy and excitement to your life, there's nothing wrong with paying for it, but if your expectations are winning money you should find another means of employment. Know the reasons why you're doing it."
Copyright (c) 2007 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
Police prepared for Packers-Bears fan frenzy
Posted October 6, 2007
By Sara Boyd
Gannett Wisconsin Newspapers
GREEN BAY - A 4-0 Packers start plus a Sunday night game plus a heated longtime rivalry - sounds like the makings of a crazy night in Green Bay.
But security officials say they are prepared.
Officers will be ready for any alcohol-related situations although security tactics are standard from game to game, according to Capt. Randy Schultz of the Brown County Sheriff's Department.
"For lack of a better term, we have what we call the party factor," he said. "The officers are prepared to have a higher level of alertness for issues connected to that."
However, as history shows, only a small percentage of the fans get out of hand, he said.
Last year, when the Packers faced the Bears during their home opener, 10 people were arrested - which goes to show that most fans tend to be well behaved, Schultz said.
"When you're talking about 70,000 plus, most folks are pretty sensible," he said. "It's just that small percent we watch for and want to catch before something bad happens."
Chief Eric Dunning of the Ashwaubenon Public Safety Department said his officers will staff the game as they normally do - the late start and big rivalry aside.
"Every game is a big game," he said, adding that they don't foresee any problems. "Most people have to work on Monday anyway."
Although security standards are the same, the intensity of the fans will definitely be up, said Aaron Popkey, manager of corporate communications for the Packers.
"I think overall there will be an electric atmosphere," he said. "I don't think it presents any different scenarios logistically or with security, but the fans are certainly excited."
Sara Boyd writes for the Green Bay Press-Gazette
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