Hongkonger Cyrus Chan*, 28, still remembers how defeated he felt the day he lost almost everything to gambling.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne night, around 10pm, I had just lost again and was left with less than HK$8,000 [US$1,020]. I was ready to end my life,\u201d he said, recalling the incident from two years ago.<\/p>\n
Chan said a friend introduced him to gambling four years ago, and he soon became addicted.<\/p>\n
He even quit his job as a construction worker to gamble full-time, which he said won him quick money at first and also offered an escape from family woes, including a strained relationship with his stepmother.<\/p>\n
But he said his addiction put him in debt, leaving him with losses of HK$1.2 million over three months playing baccarat. He had to turn to borrowing from friends and banks.<\/p>\n
Chan said he was involved in various types of gambling, such as baccarat and betting on football and esports, and illegal online basketball gambling was one of his favourites.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hongkonger Cyrus Chan*, 28, still remembers how defeated he felt the day he lost almost everything to gambling.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25939,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[276],"tags":[140,21360,21350,21352,10931,21361,18,21357,5256,135,4202,21355,19,17,167,502,5,2528,21354,21359,21351,2990,21356,21353,21358],"class_list":{"0":"post-25938","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-addiction","9":"tag-alice-mak-mei-kuen","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-basketball-betting","12":"tag-betting","13":"tag-cyrus-chan","14":"tag-eire","15":"tag-financial-secretary-paul-chan-mo-po","16":"tag-gambling","17":"tag-health","18":"tag-hong-kong","19":"tag-hong-kong-jockey-club","20":"tag-ie","21":"tag-ireland","22":"tag-mental-health","23":"tag-mentalhealth","24":"tag-news","25":"tag-olympics","26":"tag-roy-ying-fai","27":"tag-samson-tse-shu-ki","28":"tag-scmp","29":"tag-society","30":"tag-sunshine-lutheran-centre","31":"tag-university-of-hong-kong","32":"tag-us-national-basketball-association"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}