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Playing a winning hand to tackle gambling
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SI Guoqi almost lost his family to his wife’s gambling addiction. Then he took things into his own hands — literally.
Si, who hails from Puyang in the central Chinese province of Henan, took lesson in card tricks from a master card sharp and used what he learned to help rehabilitate compulsive gamblers by showing them how easily they can be duped into losing money.
After moving around the country for years, Si and his family recently relocated from Beijing to settle in Shanghai to run his Center for Detoxing Gamblers in the city.
Si’s wife was once one of those losing big sums. She was addicted to mahjong. Nine years ago, her debts blew out to 1 million yuan (US$160,000), his hair salon business was faltering and his marriage teetered on the brink of divorce.
“I had come to hate her at the time, and the breaking point was when I found out she had lost 300,000 yuan at mahjong in just one day,” he said. “That was almost the annual profit of the largest franchise of our hair salon.”
Something drastic had to be done.
First he persuaded his wife to move from Puyang and her mahjong cronies to Mianyang in the southwestern province of Sichuan in 2008. He said she was persuaded for the sake of their child.
Tricks of trade
Si, now 42, next decided to take aim at the insidious gambling industry that had ruined his wife. He started a free consulting service for compulsive gamblers. After seven years, he claims to have helped rehabilitate more than 7,000 addicts.
His first efforts at consulting yielded paltry results.
“I was still an angry man at that time, and I also came to realize that mere talking to these people about the evils of gambling from my own experience might not really work well,” he said.
In 2009 he turned to Zheng Taishun, a well-known card sharp and mahjong master, asking him to teach him the tricks of trade in cheating.
“I agreed to help on the condition that he would never apply what he learned to gambling or to disclose the tricks to anyone else,” said Zheng, who owns a chess club in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian.
Si, it turned out, was a natural at card tricks.
“It took me only six months to master what would normally take a person decades to learn,” he said.
The rest is TV history.
In recent years, Si has appeared on popular local and national talent shows and talk shows, telling his life story, showing card tricks and imploring the public never to try their luck against stacked odds at gambling tables.
The frequent media exposure led more than 20,000 people to seek Si’s help. In response, he developed a five-day gambling detox program. It removes gamblers from the temptations of their everyday environment and has them watch videos of Si’s TV appearances and engage in group therapy sessions. Participants are also required to go to bed early, get up early and work out every day, as Si said unhealthy living habits can make people more susceptible to temptation.
Gamblers are accepted into the program only if they come with family members, because gambling is an affliction that affects the whole family. Si said he also feared that solo participants might be scamsters there to tempt fellow participants into late-night gambling sessions.
Those who enter the detox program are asked to stay in touch with Si and his team of seven after they leave. A gambler isn’t really “cured” until he’s been free of gambling for five years, Si explained.
A 39-year-old salesman and former businessman surnamed Lin told Shanghai Daily over the phone that Si’s program transformed him.
Lin, from Putian in Fujian, entered Si’s detox program last year in Beijing.
“After seeing him miraculously cheating with my own two eyes, I realized that my chances were doomed before I even took a seat at the table,” said Lin, who said he racked up 1 million yuan of debt in 10 years of gambling. “I’m now aware that gambling destroys love between family members and friends, and that life is more meaningful than that.”
Si’s approach to reforming gamblers has been praised by medical experts.
Dr Timothy A Kelly, director of Behavioral Health Services and a clinical psychologist at DeltaHealth Hospital and Clinics in Shanghai, said the principles he uses correspond to preferred psychotherapy treatment for gambling dependence.
“The idea is to replace irrational thoughts with rational ones and to help gamblers think correctly,” Kelly told Shanghai Daily. “The major reason why a very low percentage of compulsive gamblers seek help from therapists is a lack of centers offering effective treatment.”
Si’s current Center for Detoxing Gamblers is located on the fourth floor of the Tianlinge Hotel in Jiading District.
The business-like space has been provided by the hotel, which in turn rents rooms to clients who come from all over the country for treatment.
Si said he has been relying on such generosity in recent years because his services are provided free. Sometimes grateful clients do leave him generous gratuities. He is considering registering his business and charging modest fees.
Si said he frequently receives threatening messages from unknown people who don’t like his anti-gambling stance but he believes his media exposure protects him from being hurt.
“I look forward to the day when I can close down the service because there are no more families suffering from gambling addiction,” he said.
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