The Asia Poker League is about to host a poker tournament in mainland China for the first time since police officials raided and shut down the Nanjing Millions of 18-months ago.

Walk into any casino in the UK and there will be a lot of Chinese punters.

I used to think our liberal way of thinking brainwashed them. And then I read an article in The Telegraph, written in 2010, where the author unearthed statistics showing that despite a ban on gambling in mainland China since 1949, it’s estimated that over one trillion yuan (£900m) is wagered illegally on an annual basis.

It’s a quite incredible number when you consider more than half of the population live in abject poverty. The same article mentioned that officials arrested more than 600,000 people for gambling offences that year.