Games of Chance
Tuesday, October 9th, 2007 by Sidarta WijayaHumans invent various games of chance to satisfy their needs of gambling, Balinese are no exception. Bali is no gambler paradise compare to Las Vegas, Monte Carlo or Macau. In fact, the Indonesian government has forbidden any form of gambling. But still there are some chances to hold a game of chance or two. Balinese have devised a range of games of chance from kocokan, a simple game played with dices to cockfighting, with its complex rules and traditions. Apart from cockfighting the most popular games of chance in Bali are Kocokan and Bola Adil.

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Kocokan is a kind of roulette in which the players put some money on a vinyl mat which is decorated with six different pictures of cartoon version of Hindu gods, demons or animals, the players put the bets on a picture, the banker has three large six-sided dices, the faces matching the pictures of the mat, he puts the dices on a plate and covers them with an upside-downed bowl, shakes them up, and opens the cover to determine the resulting faces showing up determining the winning bets.





