Any gambler who has spent time in the casinos of Macau knows more or less exactly what is going on with the wild volatility in the Chinese stock markets, which has wiped out millions of dollars worth of shares in a few weeks.

The sudden panic reminded me of the way a table of baccarat players at the city’s Lisboa casino will — with irrational violence of mood — suddenly abandon a table and rush towards another, where the i ching or “winds of fortune” have mysteriously alighted according to supernatural laws that no one understands or wants to understand.

I know that feeling well. In darker days, I used to hole up at the old Lisboa (Macau’s most venerable old-style casino, owned by Stanley Ho, the redoubtable property developer and champion ballroom dancer) and while away my nights descending through the vertically stacked casinos, one by one, with ever-diminishing handfuls of chips. When I embarked on these self-defeating ventures (as any casino executive will tell you, the punter always loses to the house), I had no idea how the Chinese approached matters of luck, fortune and sudden wealth gained not by hard work or cunning but by the act of throwing yourself into the flow of the i ching. For the favourite Chinese game at the tables is baccarat punto blanco, virtually the only card game played in commercial casinos that involves no skill or intelligence whatsoever.