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":377132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4317],"tags":[9776,131624,12048,131619,4304,131625,57390,6732,105,3749,92465,218,12,7126,131620,131623,21058,4678,131621,16,15,20629,131622],"class_list":{"0":"post-377131","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-financial-secretary-paul-chan-mo-po","15":"tag-gambling","16":"tag-health","17":"tag-hong-kong","18":"tag-hong-kong-jockey-club","19":"tag-mental-health","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-olympics","22":"tag-roy-ying-fai","23":"tag-samson-tse-shu-ki","24":"tag-scmp","25":"tag-society","26":"tag-sunshine-lutheran-centre","27":"tag-uk","28":"tag-united-kingdom","29":"tag-university-of-hong-kong","30":"tag-us-national-basketball-association"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115099745956162857","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}