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":98984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[6116,23240,64,63,726,23230,615,72359,36029,21944,137,10340,72355,514,515,44,10018,72354,72358,15216,6213,72356,72353,72357],"class_list":["post-98983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-addiction","tag-alice-mak-mei-kuen","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-basketball-betting","tag-betting","tag-cyrus-chan","tag-financial-secretary-paul-chan-mo-po","tag-gambling","tag-health","tag-hong-kong","tag-hong-kong-jockey-club","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth","tag-news","tag-olympics","tag-roy-ying-fai","tag-samson-tse-shu-ki","tag-scmp","tag-society","tag-sunshine-lutheran-centre","tag-university-of-hong-kong","tag-us-national-basketball-association"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}