Masiao in the 80's was a highly-popular illegal numbers game in the Visayas and Mindanao area, sort of like present-day Jueteng. I'm not familiar with jueteng but masiao required betting on the following day's results of Jai Alai games that were played in Manila. If I'm not mistaken, jai alai originated from the Basque region.
Jai alai players were "imported" Spanish players from the Basque region, Cataluña and the rest of España.
A whole industry revolved around jai alai-based masiao, employing thousands, from the "financiers", "collectors" and the "runners."
The system was a bit sophisticated, if you ask me, because bets were in the form of "units". Very much like buying shares in the stock market, you get a big share of the prize money the bigger your bets.
You can also buy those "leaflets" containing statistics of players' performances, as well as "tips," strategies and those strange shapes and figures, which were supposed to hide the winning numbers. I couldn't really understand how they could give out tips, because it only means those who published these leaflets already knew the results beforehand, right?
Anyway, kids like me would easily blow our allowances betting numbers divined from dreams, shapes of flowers, cloud formations, and even from inspecting the underbelly of spiders.
One cousin claimed she got the winning number in her sleep and proof of this was the pair of gold earrings dangling from her ears.
We were impressed.
We were impressed.
It was so popular I sometimes skipped recess in order to have money for masiao. I never won anything.
And so I stopped.
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