Category: Gambling

Chinese Gambling Games Greatly Influence American Casinos

Lance

Go to any American casino and these days you’ll find an assortment of Chinese gambling games awaiting your attention. There’s no doubt that the Chinese culture has exerted its influence on American gambling. Here’s a list and a brief description of some of the most interesting Chinese gambling games. But you won’t find all of them at our American casinos.

Pai Gow Poker

Pai Gow Poker is a cross of American Poker and a Chinese tile game. It’s two-fisted poker, since the object is to hold the highest two poker hands. One is a five-card hand and the other just two cards. Players oppose a banker who can be the casino or a player with enough courage and dollars to oppose all the others. You see Pai Gow Poker in virtually all American casinos and around the world.

Sic Bo

Sic Bo translated is dice pair. You play on a special table, using three standard dice. There are a variety of bets you can place and you win based on the results of the roll. Payoff is based upon the odds schedule of the resultant combinations. Many land-based casinos in the U.K., the U.S., and Macau feature Sic Bo.

Fan Tan

Fan Tan was once the favorite of all Chinese gambling games. But its heyday has come and gone. Don’t confuse this Traditional Fan Tan with the card game bearing the same name. Cards aren’t used for this somewhat improvised game. Objects like beans, buttons, or coins are covered by a bowl placed within a square. The four sides of this square and its corners bear numbers. The gamblers bet on these numbers and the house removes four objects from beneath the bowl at a turn until only one group remains. If the number of objects remaining match the number you have from the square, you win. Today you can play Fan Tan mostly on Internet sites or in Macau.

Mahjong

An ancient Chinese tile game, rumored to have been invented by Confucius himself, Mahjong has reaped the world. Mahjong boasts not only a large, devoted fan base for its American variation, but it has many variants of scoring and even different amounts of tiles in its Cantonese, Japanese, and Vietnamese incarnations, among others. Mahjong is very popular online as well.

It’s clear to see that Chinese gambling games have brought a taste of the exotic to American casinos that players are not wishing to give up. In places like Las Vegas and Atlantic City, Chinese gambling games have taken up permanent residence beside the traditionally popular casino games. Players are intrigued and excited by the tight odds and fast play. Surely, Chinese gambling games as a means of entertainment in American casinos are here to stay.

Even situs poker online was a popular Chinese invention that the Americans were hooked to and beginners were provided an opportunity to practice this one for the bigger games in the casino where they would have high stakes.

Electronic Gambling Bingo Halls Overpopulating Walker County, Alabama

Lance

In early 2007 the first “charity” bingo hall popped up in Argo, located between the city limits of Jasper and Sumiton. It was the most recent attempt to establish electronic gambling in Walker County after many before it had failed miserably. It soon became apparent to everyone that not only was there no bingo involved, just cheap Las Vegas-like electronic slot machines, not much if anything was going to charity or to the improvement of our community, for that matter.

Since the first bingo hall’s opening, many more have followed in the past 2 years and now there is more than 10 of these establishments in Argo alone, with a few popping up in Sumiton earlier this year. At this rate you can soon officially call our community “Bingo Nation”.

Many groups of people have protested the developments and the growth of electronic gambling in Walker County over the years. One group of people even held signs for several weeks at the city limit signs of Jasper and Sumiton saying such things as “5 miles to Hell”. Christian activist groups have actively battled the local government on the legality of electronic gambling in Walker since mid-2007.

The topic started to get hot earlier this year when the entire state held a vote to govern the bingo halls not only in Walker County but across the entire state, heavily taxing the ones that were indeed deemed legal while if the bill passed hundreds of the establishments would have been forced to shut down. In May the bill was voted on and did not pass.

But let’s be honest here, if proceeds were indeed going to charity, would anyone be so quick to pass judgment or protest? Probably not, proceeds would be going to a good cause. But we have yet to see any evidence that any money has been going anywhere but to the bingo halls’ greedy owners. And probably a little on the side to the Mayor of Argo, of course.

Some throw the fact that these bingo halls are bringing more jobs into the county but they can’t give the salary that much when compared to Sbobet which is an online site of gaming but has significant criteria for giving the staff salary higher. While that statement is true, it’s only a couple of hundred jobs if that maximum and does the paychecks of those couple of hundred people amount to the number of dollars that our towns and this county as a whole is losing in potential revenue for our legitimate businesses like our restaurants, department and grocery stores, car lots, etc. due to these low class scumballs hooking our county’s residents on the thrill of gambling and bleeding their wallets and pocketbooks dry?

At one point Walker County has to say enough is enough and get rid of these places. They are doing us no good. Only giving us a bad name, a tacky look, and an abysmal local economy.