Kelong Kings: Confessions of the world's most prolific match-fixer (4 page)

"Old Chinese
men gambling on football at Jalan Besar", Kanan had said.

Kanan and I were
persuaded that we had football knowledge and
here
were these
old men; Chinese men. What did
they know about football? I was sure that we would have been able to
outsmart them quite easily.

"Fuck", I
replied to Kanan, "let's go and check it out".

The old Chinese men
sat in the bookies corner of Jalan Besar's regular Grand Stand.
Although gambling was illegal in Singapore, everybody knew that there
was a bookies corner in the stadium, even the police and the Football
Association officials. It had been there ever since the 60's, before
I was even born. No ordinary fan would occupy the 50-or-so seats
where the old Chinese men sat, nor did any law enforcement officer
ever attempt to give them any trouble. It was like a hobby for these
Chinese men:
t
hey
would get off work then spend the evening at the stadium where they
would sit down, have a cup of tea and gamble on any of the teams that
played. The early birds would usually begin the day with a
conversation about the upcoming fixture. Most of the time no one had
a clue as to whom the players on the pitch were, so the bookies would
have to wait until several minutes into the match to figure out the
standard of the teams and offer the adequate odds on handicap and
total goals scored.

Red team would kick
off against White team
and
then, about five minutes into the match, the bookies
would shout, "Give you half-ball on Red", and open the
gambling.

Back then, there
were the Singaporean Business House League, the Local National League
and the Inter Constituency tournament; all of them were amateur
competitions. The international fixtures that were played in
Singapore were the South East Asian games, the Asian Games and so on.
There was a guy called Tai Sun, whom we called HQ. Bookies and
punters would call HQ's home to find out where the daily match was
going to be played; there were several stadiums in Singapore and HQ
was our control tower. How Tai Sun had become HQ is something that I
had
never bothered to ask but he always sounded very
enthusiastic when he answered the telephone to dispatch bookies and
punters to the respective venues.

"Today is Toa
Payoh Stadium", he would announce.

"OK".

"7:30 p.m."

"I'll be
there".

My friends and I
would punt all kinds of bets, but only on football; I don't bet on
anything else. I don't exactly know why, but football was always the
number one sport in Singapore among Indians and Malaysians.
Singaporeans could be seen playing football in parks, basketball
courts or in the streets at any given time of the day. Singaporean
Indians don't indulge in cricket; they will slap you if you even
mention that sport. I still cannot understand cricket; a grown man
throwing the ball then running back and forth. And the weirdest thing
is that a match can continue until the following day. What kind of
sport is that? Fortunately I'm from Singapore; if I were born in
India, I'd probably be fixing cricket matches right now.

Very
few Chinese Singaporeans play football; they prefer basketball. When
you drive by their blocks in Singapore you will see basketball courts
everywhere but, to this day, I have never seen a Chinese basketball
player in Singapore slam dunk or even touch the rim. Usually, after
the Chinese had finished playing basketball, the basket-posts would
become our goals, the basketball
court our pitch, and we would play five against five or four against
four.

We
also played a lot of seven-aside football in those days, especially
during the weekends. Seven against seven; two reserves; a regular
pitch; each half-time, five minutes. They don't play that kind of
football in Europe and, trust me, it's very tiring; within five
minutes you'll be dying. There could be anywhere from 50 to 100 teams
participating in a single competition:
t
hree
pitches, five minutes, the teams
divided
into four
groups. We would sit down and wait for an hour, sometimes an hour and
a half, between games and would pass the time by playing blackjack. I
had my own team called 'Brazilian Boys', a team that still exists to
this very day, and I organized seven-aside and eleven-aside
tournaments. I met many of my friends and later associates during
those matches but never fixed any of them.

During
the weekdays, my national service was keeping me very busy. At one
point
I was even transferred to serve in
the school of Combat Medics.

"What the fuck
am I going to do with a combat medic certificate?" I asked
myself. "I've got no interest in the medical field".

Singapore has a
defense force just for namesake: Who can we fight? A small, tiny
island like this one. But the combat medic course was very tough
because you had to carry a heavy bag and go through CPR and all kinds
of other medical nonsense. Fuck. It was too much strain for the 150
dollars per month that they paid me. One of my friends was in the
commando unit, three bars on his shoulder, red beret on his head.

"You can find a
loophole", he suggested, "and get out of the combat medic
unit".

"How?" I
asked.

"Just pretend
that you have epilepsy".

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, sure.
Pretend to have an epileptic attack. You fall on the ground shaking
and they will discharge you from the course".

During a weekend
leave I went home. My father had since sold our strip of land in
rural Chua Chu Kang and we had moved into a flat in Woodlands, a
newly-developed neighborhood situated further north, near the Johor
Causeway to Malaysia. From Woodlands, I took a taxi to the Toa Payoh
stadium to watch the football game, then phoned a friend.

"Call an
ambulance", I told him.

I faked an epileptic
attack, the ambulance arrived and I was given a three-day medical
leave. On the following Monday, I went to see my camp's medical
doctor.

"Here", he
handed me a slip of paper. "Submit this certificate".

Next I knew, I was
discharged from the course. I was left to water the plants, the only
important task requested of me being my presence. Not three months
went by and I was shoved into yet another course. I became a clerk
and was posted to a unit near my home. I wanted a way out. There was
an athletics competition that I was going to take part in as a
representative of the Singapore Armed Forces so I went to see the
army captain in charge of athletes and demanded more time for
training.

"OK, you can
attend camp half-day", he said and handed me a permit.

After completing my
duties at camp, I was supposed to train, but didn't. I just did a bit
of running here and there to keep fit. I was losing interest in
athletics, nevertheless, we won the competition and became champions.
My friend won the first tier and I won the second. We were 'ditched',
which meant that we didn't have to attend camp for six months, and
the entire staff was furious with me.

"How can this
fucker get such treatment?" they complained.

No more stinking
camouflage uniform; I could go back to gambling.

Hokkien was the
gambling language in Jalan Besar stadium. The Chinese have many, many
dialects; hundreds of them. I can't speak much Mandarin but I can
speak Hokkien. It's a street language; many Singaporeans speak it. If
the conversation is about football, I can definitely speak Hokkien.
When I first began gambling, I couldn't understand Hokkien that well,
nor could I understand the odds, but I picked up both along the way.

Half-ball, half-one,
then it goes to one, then to one-and-a-half. If you ask a stranger on
the street, he'll say: "What the fuck is one, one-and-a-half?
What's 0.75? What's total goals? What's handicap?"

Unlike the United
Kingdom, where odds are expressed in fractions, in Singapore the odds
are measured in decimals. They start off even, at zero, then
gradually increase to 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 1, depending on the strength
of the teams on the pitch. By multiplying the odds with the amount of
money that you bet, you can calculate how much you are going to
profit in case of a win. But I guess you need to be a gambler to
fully grasp the meaning of the odds.

A lot of people
don't know the difference between a bookmaker and a punter. A punter
is a person that gambles his money on football, horse racing or
whatever. A bookmaker is a person who collects and sells bets for a
profit. I am not interested in being a bookmaker; I'm a punter. I
counter the bookmaker's odds and give him better odds. Then, if he
still wants to pick the same team that I chose, he'll have to counter
me with better odds yet. We counter one another until I think it
advantageous to accept his offer. For example: Brazil vs Italy.

"I take Brazil
and give you half-ball", the bookmaker will say. "I win you
even money".

And I'll counter: "I
take Brazil, give you half, and I win you nine".

Whatever you counter
is open to everybody else. Like in a marketplace, the others may
choose to collect your bet or to counter your odds. We all sell at a
certain price and buy at a certain price. When you're comfortable
with the price, you buy. When the offer is closed, someone else may
come to you and ask: "Do you have a bit of stock? I want to
share with you".

And you better hand
out a share or else they will curse you so badly that you will surely
lose your bet.

Why did I start
gambling? Take Tiger Woods, for instance. He had everything one could
desire from life: a nice family,
an
enviable
bank balance; but he sat in the
casino all night at the blackjack table. Man's thinking power is
always eclipsed by his libido and Tiger is no exception to this rule.
John Terry wagers on greyhounds, Wayne Rooney bets on horses and so
does Michael Owen; and when Rooney has to pay up, he tells the
bookies that he cannot settle his debt and blames Owen for his
gambling addiction. And the list goes on and on; these are all people
who have money and fame but still look for thrills in the form of
gambling.

Then there are those
that gamble for the money alone, hoping to win. Money is essential
for survival. People need thrills and people want money. Who doesn't
want money? I want to drive a nice car, I want to live in a nice
house.

Gamblers all have
their secret winning formulas, although these formulas are seldom
successful. A true punter never gives up, even if he is sinking
deeper and deeper
into
debt. When you've scratched the bottom of the barrel,
you are prepared to do anything to win; even cheat. Ben Johnson and
Marion Jones were top athletes but when they couldn't make it on
their own anymore, they used steroids. Politicians rig elections to
get elected. The world is a filthy place to live in.

Until very recently,
European betting was ancient, stone age, stupid gambling. Three
hundred years ago people would gamble that way. Manchester United to
win against Wigan Athletic FC: for every dollar you bet on Man Utd,
you win 20 cents; 4 dollars for a draw and 12 dollars for Wigan's
victory. Who the fuck wants 20 cents? No gambler in his right frame
of mind should ever accept such a rotten deal. You can take Wigan but
they will never beat United in a hundred years. How on earth can you
bet that way? And why should I have to pick the right result among
three possible choices: win, lose and draw? It's too difficult that
way. It's a three-way gamble.

Asian betting is
just two-way: 50-50 chance. Now that's how you're supposed to bet.
They put a two-ball handicap on Wigan, meaning that Man Utd has to
win by three goals to clear the handicap. So now: Manchester United
or Wigan, what will you choose? If the match ends 2-0 for United, you
don't win, you don't lose; you get your money back. If it's 3-nil for
Man Utd, for every 100 dollars you bet, you win 95 dollars, with 5
dollars going to the betting company for their commission. And there
are many other variables that you can gamble on:
who's
going to win the coin toss? Who's going to lead in the
first half and at the end of the game? Who's going to win the next
corner? How many goals? Your money is credited immediately into your
account as we speak. Gambling for 20 cents is simply ridiculous.
If
there's
an even chance to win, then
there's a temptation. Unless you want to pick a 12-dollar team like
Wigan and hope that they will win against Man Utd. Fuck, no 12-dollar
team is ever going to beat United. Unless you fix the match.