Thrills & spills of a first time gambler

The expectation from a novel gambling experience was sending judders of delight and fright into my brain, writes N Raghuraman

Modern Macau was set up on December 20, 1999 when China incorporated it as a special administrative region. Macau may be a 20th century Chinese acquisition, taken reluctantly from Portugal on an overused negotiation table: China said 'hold on!' when the occupiers wanted to leave in 1974. But since 1850s, the small territory has been a gargantuan, and legal, gambling table.

According to nationalist legends, the colonists were tired at the end of it. When they tried to teach their language to the locals, the Chinese only learned Portuguese for 'Bingo,' and 'You lost, and owe me heck of a lot European money!' One heroic figure apparently boosted his chance of trumping his inmates in a colonial jail - the bet involved a Portuguese warden beating him senseless at a particular time - by tickling the said warden's bottom. The patriot won and was beaten senseless. The Portuguese spent 442 years in Macau, making it the oldest European colony in Asia.

Macau is the only place in China where casinos are legal and I was invited for the opening of the largest gambling floor spread across 546,000 sq ft by the Las Vegas Sands Corporation which owns the Venetian Macau, a  3,035 all-suite hotel, last week. The floor had approximately 6,000 slot machines which are specially designed for the Asian market and over 800 table games featuring Baccarat, Fan Tan, Caribbean Stud Poker, Yee Hai Hi (chicken, crab and fish) Three Card Poker, Blackjack, Big and small (Sic Bo) and Roulette.

As I accepted the invitation and flew, I spent my time on the plane reading the territory's history and mythology. The airhostess offered many annotations to the book I was reading and urged me to 'leave everything and find fun in fortune'. I would have dismissed that turgid palaver, but my innate gambling pump had been thoroughly primed. The airhostess dissolved into the pressurised cabin and I heard a very comely dice in tight dress talking to me about the glories of blackjack. Even Kafka would not have thought of such a metamorphosis, I place Rs10,000 on that claim.

When I exited the ferry at Macau, which I took from Hong Kong, I had the impression that I was a coin sliding into a vast slot machine. The cabbie, to my eyes, looked like Robert De Niro in Casino, the 1995 Martin Scorsese classic, and I told him so. The man was elated and shook like a pack of happy cards that was being shuffled out of turn.

He began to quote De Niro's famous introduction (delivered by the character Ace Rothstein) to casino paranoia: "In Vegas, everybody's gotta watch everybody else. Since the players are looking to beat the casino, the dealers are watching the players. The box men are watching the dealers. The floor men are watching the box men. The pit bosses are watching the floor men. The shift bosses are watching the pit bosses.

The casino manager is watching the shift bosses. I'm watching the casino manager." I loved the man. It was a breakthrough! No, the breakthrough had nothing to do with tolerantly enduring a garrulous cabbie with a diploma in film appreciation, but the liberating awareness that I could gamble in Macau, even if I was a curd-rice-eating Iyer. Besides, my wife was still in Mumbai.

The moment I checked into the hotel, I accessed the Net for some dress-code advice for big-time gambling. Should it be a tuxedo? Should it be a business jacket? The consensus was a dampener - I was going to gamble for the first time in my life and no one thought some grandeur befitted the occasion.

One site explained that most casinos are organised around local customs, so the atmosphere only reflects the overall tradition of the neighbourhood. But one site had a sage admonition: "If you can't afford shoes don't go to a casino." I could afford shoes so I went in for the kill in the evening. I was ushered to a blackjack table by a local manager, who was specifically instructed to be 'nice' to journalists.

The expectation from a novel experience was sending judders of delight and fright into my brain. I was asked by the dealer to point something out, I did. I won few red and pink coloured coins. Elated by the initial victory, I kept moving from table to table losing sometime the coins I won. This continued for almost two hours. And at last I came to a table of Caribbean Stud Poker and moved my first bet.

And I waited for the million dollar payout. For a while, nothing much happened. It was just a bright daze of incomprehension and thrill. Then my guide-cum-manager patted my back and said: "You just lost 175 dollars. Wanna up the stake?"

I desperately wanted curd rice in the night.