Opposition to Card Games
AI wrote:
Laos is still a one-party communist state. No Free Elections: Multi-party political opposition is banned, and elections are strictly controlled by the state. While maintaining Marxist-Leninist political ideology, Laos introduced market-oriented economic reforms and state capitalism starting in the late 1980s. Global Standing: It remains one of only five communist-led states in the world, alongside China, Cuba, Vietnam, and North Korea. The biggest problem in Laos is its severe economic and debt crisis, driven by high public debt—much of it owed to China—alongside runaway inflation and a weakening national currency (the kip). High Inflation and Currency Devaluation: The Lao kip has lost a massive amount of its value against foreign currencies, pushing inflation past 26% and drastically spiking the costs of food, fuel, and everyday goods. Authoritarian Governance: Laos is a single-party communist state ruled by the Lao People's Revolutionary Party (LPRP), with tight restrictions on freedom of speech, assembly, and the press.
Cost and Infrastructure: Daily living is very affordable (often $500–$1,000 per month), but internet, medical care, and infrastructure are limited compared to neighboring Thailand. A single person needs about $600 to $1,400 per month to live in Laos, depending on your lifestyle and housing choices.
Strategic Alignment: Laos maintains closer geopolitical and economic ties with its neighbors, particularly China and Vietnam.
Initial Partial Restrictions: In June 2025, the U.S. government placed Laos on a partial entry suspension list, restricting certain immigrant and nonimmigrant visas (such as B-1, B-2, F, M, and J visas) for individuals outside the U.S. without valid visas.
Escalation to Full Ban: Effective January 1, 2026, the restrictions expanded to a full entry ban, barring Lao citizens from entering the U.S. or applying for new visas (including tourism, study, and work).
Exceptions: The restrictions generally exempt lawful permanent residents, dual nationals using non-restricted passports, immediate family members of U.S. citizens, and specific diplomatic or humanitarian cases.
Yes, $100 USD is a significant amount of money in Laos, trading at roughly 2,245,000 to 2,256,000 Lao Kip (LAK), which is well over half of a standard local monthly average wage (around 3,000,000 LAK).
Quote: harrisHas anyone ever experienced anything like this elsewhere?
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I wasn't talking about the experience of talking to a Southeast Asian person I was talking about card games being banned :D
Quote: harrisMy family went on vacation to Vietnam three years ago, and after arriving at our hotel in Ho Chi Minh City, my parents wanted to play bridge. A couple minutes after we started playing in the lobby, an employee came up to us and told us to not play because it's not okay to do this in Vietnam. Apparently, card games are associated with organized crime in that country. Has anyone ever experienced anything like this elsewhere?
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What did he want you to play, Russian roulette like in The Deer Hunter? You play bridge, the king of card games! I must say, after learning bridge my capacity for enjoying other card games became restricted. Many partners find my bidding to be eccentric (which probably does not surprise anyone!) but my NT play gets me by.
There are apparently plenty of bridge clubs in Vietnam so the game itself or card playing itself can't be taboo. It might have been just because you were in Communist Vietnam and in a Communist country people learn to be authoritarian just to show their superiors that they know how. So it might not really be a rule or custom at all. I doubt he believed you or your family would be confused with Vietnamese gangsters.
I saw someone online write that they were told not to play with dominoes in Thailand…
Anyways I think society’s different reactions to different gambling devices. I don’t really know the word to use but I would say the main four gambling devices in the West are cards (most common by far), dice, Chinese dominoes, and wheels (roulette or big six).
If I was playing a card game or game with dominoes on my porch with friends, the police wouldn’t care, but I believe I would be stopped for openly playing a dice game. Dice are associated with crime and illegal gambling in New York City, I guess cards have that reputation elsewhere.
Quote: harrisFrom what I can find online, lots of people are stopped from playing cards in hotels or cafés. I remember it being okay to play cards elsewhere though. This is because the police will take issue with it.
I saw someone online write that they were told not to play with dominoes in Thailand…
Anyways I think society’s different reactions to different gambling devices. I don’t really know the word to use but I would say the main four gambling devices in the West are cards (most common by far), dice, Chinese dominoes, and wheels (roulette or big six).
If I was playing a card game or game with dominoes on my porch with friends, the police wouldn’t care, but I believe I would be stopped for openly playing a dice game. Dice are associated with crime and illegal gambling in New York City, I guess cards have that reputation elsewhere.
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In NYC? Yeah, God forbid there be a crime going on with dice and a porch!
Just have a Monopoly game going. A game of craps can be disguised as Monopoly, with some ingenuity. Or maybe vice versa, have a Monopoly board attached to a craps table as a sidebet. Should play in Atlantic City.
Quote: harrisMonopoly-related gambling? Galaxy Gaming already has been doing that and I try to avoid getting sued 😂
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See what I would do if I wanted to make a Monopoly based game is just buy a bunch of legit Monopoly sets and glue them to the felts. You buy a Monopoly game and you can do whatever you want with it, there was no agreement on how or where you could play it, right? As long as you don't use any of their IP in the bumf you produce for it I'd think it would be fine. Maybe the lawyers here would have a different point of view, I don't know.
But anyway, not to derail your topic, I'm not aware of any cultures where card playing is a disreputable practice. In the Anglosphere it generally isn't. Horse betting has been around for a long time and all the thoroughbreds are descended from the horses of Henry VIII, who also happened to have founded the Church of England. So betting has the approval of both the House of Tudor and the C of E which made it a perfectly honorable practice for those who speak our language and share our cultural history.
We also have traditional games like euchre, whist, pinochle, Schafskopf if you're German, that aren't explicitly betting games, as opposed to poker, baccarat etc. where the betting is the game. Bridge is a descendant of whist but surprisingly it was once a big betting game and a very dirty game due to undisclosed bidding conventions and illicit communication.
Hearts & spades get played for stakes, too.
I'd feel remiss not mentioning backgammon. It's not a card game, but without gambling (and the cube), it loses a lot.
Yes. Playing cards is looked down upon in south east Asia,because it’s usually associated with gambling. My in-laws from Cambodia don’t allow cards in their home. They feel that only cheaters and bad people play cards.Quote: harrisMy family went on vacation to Vietnam three years ago, and after arriving at our hotel in Ho Chi Minh City, my parents wanted to play bridge. A couple minutes after we started playing in the lobby, an employee came up to us and told us to not play because it's not okay to do this in Vietnam. Apparently, card games are associated with organized crime in that country. Has anyone ever experienced anything like this elsewhere?
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Quote: DieterEuchre, sheepshead, and cribbage aren't explicitly gambling games, but I think that's mostly because penny-a-point "isn't really gambling" in most people's view.
Hearts & spades get played for stakes, too.
I'd feel remiss not mentioning backgammon. It's not a card game, but without gambling (and the cube), it loses a lot.
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Part of it might be that we see cards as educational devices. Every classroom used to have math and letter card sets and some of them were games, and when kids played Uno, Crazy Eights or Hearts or whatever else and kept score that was treated as an arithmetic drill.
Back when I was a kid the only thing that was "for dummies" was watching TV, and any other activity was considered a step up from that. If it had letters or numbers on it even more so.
https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/45795-how-americans-feel-about-30-card-games
I had to look up all the known games to remember what some people were playing on a cross country Greyhound bus one day last century. It was likely Pinochle.
How To Play Pinochle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSpIXNd5uec
My former high school friends used to play Euchre a lot, even for a dollar a point as gambling. That'd be more like $20 a point now that they're grown up. They only let me play one game to 10, and that's all that was written.
Bars in the Midwest used to have Euchre days where they'd fill up the tables with Euchre players.
There's some similarity between Euchre and Pinochle, but Pinochle is for the more hard-core card players.
How to Play Euchre
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLOS84a6FtQ
Quote: AutomaticMonkeyQuote: DieterEuchre, sheepshead, and cribbage aren't explicitly gambling games, but I think that's mostly because penny-a-point "isn't really gambling" in most people's view.
Hearts & spades get played for stakes, too.
I'd feel remiss not mentioning backgammon. It's not a card game, but without gambling (and the cube), it loses a lot.
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Part of it might be that we see cards as educational devices. Every classroom used to have math and letter card sets and some of them were games, and when kids played Uno, Crazy Eights or Hearts or whatever else and kept score that was treated as an arithmetic drill.
Back when I was a kid the only thing that was "for dummies" was watching TV, and any other activity was considered a step up from that. If it had letters or numbers on it even more so.
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I learned basic addition by playing blackjack around age 5, so yes. I refined my skills with cribbage a few years later.
When my daughters were crying that elementary math was hard, I sat them down and started dealing blackjack. It took about two weeks to flip them from crying at numbers to flying through addition worksheets.
The youngest is now riding me to teach her how to deal blackjack. I told her to learn how to shuffle, but she's fighting me on it. (Sorry, kid, this isn't endurance training where you slug the stub, cut the discards, and reload the shoe.)
I may have to teach her 6:5 and 3:2, just to work on some fractional multiplication.
