New Year Gambling Stats

Well, the holidays are over and the New Rat Year is finally beginning.

To bring in the new year, Jo's family did what they always do - gamble as much as possible over the holidays. Actually, this is not only Jo's family, it is most Asians. In fact, I will assume that many overseas Chinese also take a few days holiday during the Chinese New Year time and gamble away.

Of course, high stakes gambling is frowned upon, especially since family and friends are playing and winning a large amount from someone often brings large problems, but small stake gambling with friends and family (in the range of NT$10 - NT$50 - or about $.25 to $1.00) is exciting and interesting.

Yes, I am hooked.

Basically, there are many ways to take and give money to your family and friends, but the three main ones here (or that we play) are

• Ma Jiang (or Mahjong, Mah Jhong)

• Shee Bala

• Big Ol' Two

I am not going to go into the ins and outs of how to play, since especially for Ma Jiang it is too complicated, but the main point is that after playing with Jo's family for about 15 hours (over a few days), our coffers went up and down like the tides.

And our final tally is that we ended up in the red about NT$20 (or about $.70). At the high point, we were up about NT$400 bucks, but that quickly faded when we started playing Ma Jiang - although I have to give Jo credit - twice at the very last round (of MANY rounds) she got the best situaiton or "Zi Mou" (where you pick the tile that will make the perfect match) and that is when you rake it in. So that was cool.

But damn, Jo's mom is almost 70, but as sharp as a knife and won many times - at everything!

So we consider ourselves lucky to loose only a little bit - the other siblings lost about NT$200 to NT$500 to their mom!

For myself, I had a good run at Shee Ba La - the dice game - where absolutely no skill was required.....sigh....

Anyway, in this year of the Rat, things are looking pretty good!




Best Wishes in the New Year!

Jeff & Jo