In April this year, the well-known British sports betting company bet365 officially announced that it would stop providing services to the Chinese region and repeatedly reminded users to withdraw their account balances as soon as possible. This news is poignant. As a long-time user of the platform for nine years, I have always had full trust in this company.
In the Chinese online gambling circle, the phenomenon of platforms "running away" with the money has long been commonplace. Even platforms that appear to operate legally often refuse withdrawals for reasons such as "counter-betting arbitrage," "match-fixing," or "technical anomalies." However, 365 has always been known for "acknowledging bets to the end": even if the odds are clearly wrong, as long as the system confirms the bet at the time of placing it, they would not shirk responsibility, even at the cost of huge losses. This persistence, which seems "foolishly adorable" to domestic players, actually stems from the deep-rooted culture of contractual spirit in the UK.
As early as 1907, the British company Howarth Erskine Ltd. built the Waibaidu Bridge over the Suzhou Creek in Shanghai. A full hundred years later, the company still retained the design drawings and solemnly wrote to remind the Shanghai Municipal Government: The bridge was designed with a lifespan of a hundred years, please pay attention to its maintenance. This letter not only evoked memories of the bridge but also touched people with the sense of responsibility that spanned a century. The spirit of the contract is not just a slogan, but a cultural habit ingrained in the bones.
In contrast, our own sense of commitment is often lacking. Some people borrow money and do not return it, justifying themselves with: "I borrowed it by my ability, why should I return it?" In their eyes, contracts are loopholes to be exploited, not norms to be respected. In the short term, this indeed seems "smart," able to exploit the loopholes in the rules and gain benefits from the system. But in the long run, this mentality erodes a person's bottom line, ultimately leading to a loss of self-trust.
The former Tieba image boards were a hub for this kind of "bro culture," where various "self-deprecating chicken soups" packaged selfishness and dishonesty as a broad-minded view of life. But the downfall of a gambler is not just an economic collapse, but a disintegration of character.
Time is a silent mountain, quietly accumulating those small but crucial breaches—a lie, an evasion, a contradiction, eventually overwhelming a person. When gamblers are penniless, heavily indebted, and their loved ones scattered, they realize that what ruins a life is not necessarily a big gamble, but those qualities that should have been upheld long ago: sincerity, kindness, courage, and trustworthiness.
Gambling is not the original sin; it is the fragility in human nature that is. Holding on to the anchor of human nature is the only way to escape the abyss. Otherwise, even without gambling, we are still on the path to our own collapse.
