It was many years ago and I was just sitting in the yard of my friend's house and using my poker chip set that I had brought over from my home country. We were playing Blackjack for small stakes money and I was the dealer with 8 decks of cards. We were not playing for anything big and I wouldn't allow anyone to bet anything higher than 100 baht per hand (this is about $3).
It caught the attention of some Thai neighbors, who although they didn't even fully understand the rules, they wanted in and after a while I had to call the game off because I know what the average Thai person's salary is and one of the guys had already lost several days worth of wages to the house and he was starting to look like he was getting upset.
Some people can't control themselves when it comes to gambling. I get that it is a rush when you win but for me I would never bet several days of wages on a game of chance especially if I had just lost a few of those games in a row.
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Recently, a story broke in one of the English language news sources about how an "illegal gambling ring got busted" in Pattaya and the police are always so proud of themselves when this happens as they line up with the people that got arrested. Thais love their photographs, that is for sure.
This particular bust was for a game called Pok Deng and I don't understand how it works, i just know it is a That game and everyone plays it it seems. There are stories of people betting insane amounts of money on this game and losing their livelihoods because of it.
So I guess the government thought that making this illegal was going to make it go away but this couldn't be further from the truth.
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It is estimated that 60% of all Thais gamble and just because the government says that they can't do that doesn't mean that they are going to stop. I'm not even in the know but I routinely encounter small games here and there that are being done under the stairs somewhere at a place that must have a lookout so the people know when to flip the playtable over and everyone has to pretend like this is a smoking area or something like that.
I also hear my friends who are married to Thais talking about various Pop Deng games that their wives go to every now and then but thankfully it is for small scale money.
The only legal gambling in Thailand is the lottery and it is amusing to me that the same people who make gambling illegal for you, are running their own gambling ring without anyone getting punished. Lottery cards are available everywhere here and it is a major part of society.
Also, I recently found out that an old abandoned building near where I currently live has actually been the home for an illegal casino for quite some time. I've never gone there because they hid it well, but I wouldn't have gone even if I had known about it.
How can something like this happen? Well I have suspicions that it is actually the police themselves that run these places because what are they gonna do? Bust themselves?
I can't help but feel that when one of these Pop Deng gambling rings gets busted, this happens to them merely because they didn't cut the police in on the earnings. It kind of makes sense though: The rest of the police force operations are pretty corrupt here, so why not that as well?
A law that nobody obeys and is meant to help protect them from themselves is a stupid law for the most part IMO. This is made worse when the only thing it is really accomplishing is that the money that could be made by the people instead is being made by the government and the police thugs that are charged with enforcing the laws that they do not apply to themselves.