‘It’s in our DNA’: Thailand’s gambling masses eye World Cup bet | Crime

Bangkok, Thailand – Every 15 minutes, a small crowd gathers at a shack in a Bangkok market to wait for the numbers to be drawn.

The buzz of anticipation at each ping-pong lotto draw is palpable but the excitement is invariably short-lived.

When the number five is called out at a recent draw, a man chewing a betel nut sighs at his loss of 1,000 Thai baht ($28). Another scrunches up the paper containing his 20-baht ($0.50) wager.

Punters who guess the right number can win 10 times their stake. But in the end, the house always wins.

“We can make up to $15,000 a month from each table and we can pay the right people to stay open,” the streetside bookmaker operating the draw told Al Jazeera, asking to remain anonymous.

With the Qatar World Cup kicking off on Sunday, Thailand is bracing for a surge in gambling, which, despite being wildly popular, is illegal outside of a handful of…