Lady luck in gambling does smile sweetly to you, now and then but not all the time. Learning how to bet in cards or dice games from a young age in the longhouse, and thus following longhouse’s intepretation of the rules, I had to adjust to the various rules of the same game according to its regionally set rules.
Our initial bets were in rubber bands, rice, corns, paddy, even local seasonal fruits such as rambutan, mangosteen, mangoes, jack fruit, guava and others but most of the time after reaching the age of fifteen, the bet was in cash. In the early faction of our secondary school days, when boredom set in, our natural gambling inclination came to the fore. Staying at Limbang Hostel, at the farthest end of the school near forest edge with zillions of escape routes to the ‘no man’s land’ just outside the school along the old Saratok-Roban Road.
These canopies were housing the perfect secret dens of gamblers among SMK Saratok students, our group having the most number. One Chinese group led by Chin, a senior student from Roban, partook in some card games as well as dice game ‘holo’. Our group, comprising mostly Form 2 and 3 kids avoided the ‘holo’ game because we were whispered that Chin and his friend Wong, also a senior from Roban, were well-equipped with few tricks with the dices.
“We better stick with ‘bandat’ (Black Jack) and do something to our cards for several advantages,” said my cousin Mawan Dupo, now a longhouse headman, who was studying in Form IIB together with me in 1969. So we marked our cards accordingly, two sets of cards in all, just in case some body else noticed something odd.
Most of the time Mawan provided the capital whereas I would happily do the dealing, putting some tricks learnt over a five-year period into practice. It was so easy to cheat in ‘Bandat’ or Black Jack. All one had to do was to control an Ace and once in every three rounds, was to get a ‘Black Jack’, namely an Ace plus a picture card or a 10.
But there were times when I went for more cards so that our cards went bust – this was another trick to keep the bets going. For small bets, I would try to go bust even if the two first cards were an Ace and a picture card. Then I remembered my mentor Uncle Talip anak Jimbai did the same thing years earlier during a card game in the longhouse – “You can sit behind me but keep your mouth shut,” he told me once.
These trips to ‘no man’s land’ outside the school became so regular that some stubborn kids – Mawan and I excluded – dared not come to their classes but instead continued with their game sessions well into the evening, sending one or two reps to the dinning hall during meals. These more than forty gamblers among Iban and Chinese boys were mostly those staying in Limbang and Sadong hostels, with some coming from nearby Krian two-storey boys hostel. By looking at the problem now – I came back more than ten years later to head the school – probably the main reason for this gambling activity was boredom due to lack of co-curricular activity during students’ leisure hours, namely between 2pm and 5pm. In those days, movements such as that of Red Crescent Society, Scouting, St John’s Ambulance, Police Cadet and others were either inactive or unheard of. At the same time, games as basketball was monopolised by a small group of Chinese students whereas sepak takraw and badminton were also special domains of selected few.
The same applied to club activities such as music, drama, debate and a few others. Deprivation from these activities was also a contributing factor to our involvement in gambling. Weeks after Gawai Dayak of that year (1969), a number of us were called to the office of our school principal Gordon Tedrick, a Canadian.
Mawan and I together with my nephew Robert Lin (now our longhouse Kedap chief) who was also from our Limbang hostel as well as Form IIB, were among those listed. We were handed a letter each that we were to be suspended from school boarding house for two weeks.
It meant two weeks of ‘holidays’. In fact we were never caught red handed but only ‘reported’ by one or two ‘culprits’ whose identities were later known to us but we just let the matter stopped there. During that time Mawan and I had made quite a big collection after Gawai, winning no less than a hundred ringgit each, thanks to our well-marked cards and some simple tricks learnt from Uncle Talip.
Monopoly notes used to fool the hostel guards.
As such I knew it would be easy to please by dad if I had cash in hand. But Lin had a problem with his fierce dad, a ‘resident dresser’ at Kaki Wong rural government clinic up the Krian River. ‘Better for you to come and join me at our farm at Perabun (along the Saratok-Sri Aman Road) about 15 kilometres from Saratok town rather than irritating your dad with our suspension,” I told Lin.
He agreed. Upon reaching our farm at Perabun, dad knew we had a problem because it was not on a weekend. Before he said anything I took a fifty ringgit note and handed it to him saying it was our gambling win and that we had been punished with a two-week suspension from school and that he had to accompany us to school to meet the principal.
Dad took the money and gave it to mom and said both Lin and I should help some house chores. When we came back to school two weeks later, dad only met a teacher who was also my distant cousin. He ‘signed’ (used thumb print actually) for me and Lin. Mawan never came back to school after that.
I stayed on until 1972 with a clean record at the school. While studying in Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Penang (July 1975-March 1979), our longest gambling (poker) session was 50 hours, starting on a Friday afternoon at 2pm and ended at around 4pm on Sunday at our rented semi-detached house in Pantai Jerjak.
In between, there were only meals of ‘Maggie Mee’ plus two eggs courtesy of our none-gambling house mate, now a senior executive with a Kuching paint company. Among the players in that session are now special members of the community.
At least two have now become full university professors whereas one became a former UNIMAS Vice Chancellor. Another one, a native of Kelantan, was in charge of the Malaysian School Examination Syndicate in Kuala Lumpur in the 90s. It so happened that he rang from his office in KL one afternoon in 1992 out of curiosity to check the school principal bearing my name.
“Are you ‘the’ Valentine from USM famous block of 316 in 1978?” he asked me saying his name was Kamaluddin. “So you are the ‘poker’ Kamal is it not?” I asked back. We had a good laugh over the phone. At the end of the conversation I told him his 1978 debt of RM27 was to be cancelled off. And we laughed over that too.
A card game about to start.
Thanks to some tricks and skills acquired throughout the years, in 1977/78 session my gambling win certainly bested my annual Federal scholarship of RM1890. To some extent, lady luck did spare me with her enchantingly beautiful smile too. While going back to campus form my fourth and final year for 1978/79 session, a group of my gambling buddies led by Jihek Haji Basanu (now Datuk) from Ranau, Sabah were caught playing poker inside a hostel room in Desa C, USM Minden Campus. Our Security Officer Major Osman who caught them said to Jihek, “Anak Haji pun pandai berjudi juga.”
Later when we wanted to gamble in the hostel, we played openly with ‘Monopoly’ bank notes (changed accordingly to give real monetory value). There were certainly suspicions among the guards but because we played with ‘Monopoly’ bank notes, we were off the hook.
In my early working days, I still went around with friends, even to the extent playing poker in Bintangor with ex CT leader as well as with crafty Bintangor millionaire. In the early 80s I befriended a talented ‘sikipoi’ four-card game exponent Ah Wat – it all started when I bailed him out of jail for RM400 – who usually put on long sleeved shirt (for keeping a card or two). By sitting quietly behind him, I learned a few tricks too. In 1984, I found out from my friends in the Special Branch of Sibu Police District that Ah Wat was murdered in Bintulu over an argument.
They said he had more than RM150,000 in his Bank Simpanan Nasional saving with the estate given to his mother as he was unmarried. Without a proper job, the police said all his money was probably earned from gambling. Odd things happen in the gambling world.
While still a novice school principal as well as new to the ‘holo’ game, a Chinese parent, who took pity on me, asked me to stay by his side in the game against ‘professionals’.
He didn’t bet but just whispered to me which of the six slots – Tiger, Fish, Prawn, Rooster, Crab or Jar – to put the bet on. I made about RM2,000 in less than 30 minutes and thereafter went on to have a cup of coffee with him. He was also a happy man after I handed him ten per cent of my winning. A day later I found out he had been banned some years earlier from joining any of the ‘holo’ session.
