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| Mocha Draws Teenagers to Gambling
The Mocha Slot Group, owned by Lawrence Ho, a son of Stanley Ho Hung Sun, offers a new form of casino in which all the games are electronically operated. Unlike the environment in the traditional casinos, there is no crowd in the Mocha, no one watches what you bet or cares whether you win or not. It is not noisy as well. What you hear inside the Mocha is the sound of dropping coins. Susan Chan (not a real name), a girl who used to work in the Lisboa Casino before, now is working in a Mocha. Chan said that there are more young people gambling in Mochas than in the Lisboa Casino. Choi said, "I used to go to game centers to play video games before, but now I like to play in the Mocha. In my opinion, I don't consider the Mocha as a casino because all the games there are like the games that I play in the game centers." There are totally four Mocha slot lounges in Macau and Taipa. In any of the Mochas, there are people paying close attention to virtual croupiers on the screen. Moreover, all the instructions are shown on the monitor. Gambling in the Mocha leads you to have a feeling of playing computer games. As the minimum betting in the Mocha is only HK$0.20 and the maximum betting HK$1,800, many young people are attracted to gamble there. Davis Fong Ka Chio, Research Coordinator of the Institute for the Study of Commercial Gaming in UM, has conducted a research project on how teenagers aged between 13 to 29 view different kinds of casinos in Macau. In the survey, about 800 interviewees were successfully interviewed. About 15 percent of them went to the Mocha in the past year. This is a significant figure showing that many young people did try betting in the Mocha. Some 30 percent of high school students and 50 percent of university students consider the Mocha as an entertainment center. Among the unemployed and high school dropouts, around 40 percent of them see gambling in the Mocha as entertainment and only 20 percent of them view it as a gambling activity. Choi also expressed that the first time he went to the Mocha was with his friends. They spent HK$50 to win HK$800 in return. Therefore, they often go there in leisure times. Fong pointed out that the Mocha has successfully built up its image as a kind of entertainment center which contains restaurants and cafe. One of the reasons for its success might be the influence of the media. Before the opening-up of casino licences in Macau, the media used to report negatively about casinos. But now, the media tend to report the casino positively most of the time. Once teenagers get the idea that gambling in casinos is a positive thing, they would have the motivation to try it themselves. If they get satisfaction in betting in the Mocha, it might become their habit, and then develop as a sort of teen culture. If gambling becomes a culture for teenagers, it would be more likely for them to become an addicted gambler. "People would become addicted to gambling much more easily by electronic gaming machines than by table games," said Fong. Tam Siu Ka, a mother of three children, said that she was worried about her children going to Mochas since they were too young to distinguish between gambling and entertainment. If they often went to Mochas with friends, they might develop a gambling habit without knowing it. Moreover, as students, they should spend more time on studying instead of going to casinos. Fong said that the research has pointed to the trend how teenagers change their behavior towards gambling in the electronic casinos. He suggested that "responsible gambling" should be established. Responsible gambling is divided into three aspects - the individual, the government and the casino aspects. Every individual should have the basic knowledge of what gambling and casinos are and be responsible for themselves. The government should oversee the policy and regulate the process of casinos. The casino business itself should not use misleading messages but to put up some messages on the screen reminding teenage players how long they have played and how much they have spent. Such messages are often required on electronic casinos in foreign countries. "The largest amount I won was HK$800 whereas the biggest amount I lost was HK$1,500," Choi added. |
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"I
do not like to go to casinos except Mocha," said Simon Choi
Pak Kuan, a 19-year-old student of the University of Macau (UM).