Betting on games of skill and chance

Online games, of both skill and betting, quickly gained popularity after the pandemic forced people to stay indoors. Many persons working from homes slipped into the habit. This was followed by hasty attempts to shut them down, sending gamers towards illegal games online. After the intervention of the Madras HC, the Tamil Nadu government has promised to look into regulating games, instead of enforcing blanket bans

Since 2018, S. Mahesh (name changed as per request) has lost a few lakh rupees playing rummy and cricket online. The 29-year-old Vadapalani resident said, “It started off with ₹5, and over the next few months, the stakes got higher and higher. After a point, despite consistently losing money, my addiction to the game increased.” But in 2020, when COVID-19 hit India, Mahesh lost his job. That was when his family was shocked to find out that he had squandered all the money that they thought he had saved for a crisis like this. “I was very depressed for a few days — One: it was totally my fault playing the game despite knowing that I had lost several times. Two: I could not even complain as I did this out of my own choice,” he said. Like Mahesh, thousands of others are losing money every minute in Tamil Nadu, betting their hard-earned money on online games. Gambling and betting is not something new, Tamil Nadu has a long history of such games. For decades, people have been betting offline on bulls, roosters, horse-racing and card games. And during the pandemic, many of these games migrated online. For instance, even rooster fights happen online. Without disclosing the location, a source said that in the last three years, there had been bets being placed on rooster fights, a popular sport in villages and rural parts of the State. “But here you don’t lose much money. The one who placed the cash on the winning rooster gets the money,” he said, adding that people sitting in other countries also watched the fights and placed bets.