Ex-gambler teaching tricks to kick addiction

SHENGYANG - "Look, it's an erbing," shouted Gao Ge, holding up to the crowd a mahjong tile showing two dots.

Slap!

He hit the tile against the green table in front of him and suddenly the image turned into liutiao, six bamboo sticks.

The trick was met with stunned silence, and one onlooker after another grabbed the tile and turned it over in their hands.

They found nothing out of the ordinary.

"This is basic stuff," Gao said to his amazed audience. "I can change the characters and symbols on the tiles whenever I want. It's kungfu of the hands."

Gao is a cheat, and proud of it.

For two decades, he even made a living off his quick reflexes, visiting gambling dens in China and across Asia to swindle the house out of copious amounts of cash.

Today, the 41-year-old runs his own casino, albeit with a twist.

Instead of beating customers, he attempts to help them beat their addiction.

"I woke up, and now I want to lift more people out of the abyss that is gambling," he said, explaining that his method is to show them the arsenal of tricks cheaters regularly use.

"I just want to make them see the truth that they will always lose," he said. "Casinos are for cheaters. I don't think anyone would want to go on gambling after they discover the truth."

At the entrance to Gao's mock casino in suburban Shenyang, capital of Liaoning province, stands a large, golden basin filled with water.

Engraved on the side is a Chinese idiom, jin pen xi shou, which means to break from evil and return to the path of virtue.

He says that since last year he and his 10 volunteers, all reformed addicts, have helped about 500 people do just that by persuading them to quit gambling.

Gao says he started playing the tables as an adolescent.

After struggling to find a job as a high school graduate, he continued his studies in the illegal gambling dens near his home.

Being short and thin, he was usually overlooked by the wealthy players.

"My inconspicuous appearance put them off guard and I took the money from their wallets," said Gao, who used his skills at casinos in China, Singapore, Malaysia and Myanmar. "I won 200,000 yuan (S$40,408) a night. It was a piece of cake."

However, his luck ran out in 2005 when he was caught cheating at a den in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.