GAMING CHARGE CHINESE HEAVILY FINED.

PRESS ASSOCIATION.) n AUCKLAND, 4th August,Wong Doo, a Chinese, was fined £50 to-day on a charge of permitting his premises to be used as a common gaminghouse. Security for appeal was filed at £ls, plus the fine and costs. £4 12s 6d. The cases against twenty-one others were adjourned pending the appeal. Wong Sun is charged with keeping the house, two others with assisting, and the rest with being found on the premises. The defence in Wong Doo's case was that the games were not games of chance any more than whist, euchre, or any game of cards ;-also that the game described by the police was not played on the date of the police raid, 16th July. The Chinese game of "ma chuck," which figured in the charges, was explained by Mr. L. P. Leary in the Auckland Police Court case on Tuesday. Ma chuck," he said, is a game played by four players. There are 136 pieces, with 34 varieties and four pieces of each kind. There are what might be described as three suits, running from one to nine. The remaining seven are not suits, but four of them represent the four winds of heaven. The other three are honours"—the "white, green, and red. .The object of the game is to fill the hand with either runs of three or sets of three or four of the same kind. The player who by lot is decided to be the player in the East first draws his pieces from a sqtiare of seventeen in the side. The remainder draw, in rotation until they get a hand of 13. Then the 'player on the East draws an odd one, which he either puts into his hand or discards into the centre of the square, which is known as The Sacred Valley." This can be picked up by any' of the other players to make three or four, or by the next player to make a run. If it survives both of these fates it becomes "dead," and lies on the table merely as an index as to what had not been collected. The pieces are picked up by the players in rotation to improve their hands, and whilst the ostensible, object of the game is to make a full hand, the true object is to block the other man from declaring his hand before you have gathered a strong hand yourself. The explanation of a good deal of skill in the game, says'Mr. Leary,'lies in the scoring, because various hands score more than others, and therefore it pays to hold up the other man from scoring by refusing to discard what you have until your hand is a sufficiently strong one to disclose it and rake in a substantial stake. An expert player can, after two or three discards, tell to a nicety what the other three players are collecting, and sometimes hold back his discards to prevent any other player getting in a position to declare his hand. This leads to a deadlock, and the game must be played again. The full game consists of each player getting his tally for one hand, and this means-.-skilled players sometimes take as long as nine hours to work out. Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 31, 5 August 1922, Page 4