hong kong jockey club
hong kong | travelled in 2011 | posted on aug 12, 2016
chinese people love to gamble very much. i already mentioned this before - but as gambling is strictly limited by law, there are just a few options in china. one is the state-run lottery. another is going to macau and trying your luck in one of the casinos. the third option is located in hong kong.
founded in 1884 as a gentlemen's club, the hong kong jockey club's intention was and still is organizing horse races. and of course, when there is racing, then there is betting, too.
today, the hkjc operates two race tracks where you can watch these races and also try your luck. so one evening, we went to the happy valley race track that is amazingly tucked in between hong kong's skyscrapers and we tried our luck. for chinese people, making the right bet seems to be some kind of magic: knowing the horses and their jockeys, examining the horses when they are presented, studying the stats of past races - all this is not enough. without obeying all the rules of chinese numerology, you have no chance.
well, maybe this was the reason why i was not able to turn my 20 hong kong dollars into some millions.
but in the end, no magic is needed to guess who the biggest winner is - or what else might be the reason that the hkjc is hong kong's biggest tax payer.
