Betting flexibly: the utilization of knowledge in cockfighting in the Philippines

This paper explores how people make decisions to bet in cockfighting in the Philippines. Although extensive research has addressed skill and luck in gambling, mainly from a psychological standpoint, relatively little attention has been given to the ways in which gamblers adeptly manipulate these aspects to guide their betting practices. To reveal the complexity and dynamics of such practices, this study illustrates how extensive knowledge, particularly that related to roosters and luck, is applied in making betting decisions through an ethnographic methodology based on participant observation in three sites and interviews with six cockfighters. By coding the obtained data, broadly three approaches are revealed in their betting behavior: business-oriented mind, rooster evaluation, and luck control. The main findings are that while using accumulated knowledge of roosters to make informed bets is a legitimate strategy, experiencing a series of defeats motivates cockfighters to consider the role of luck and take steps to manage its fluctuations. Their betting decisions emerge in the relationships among cockfighters, roosters, and the environment of the cockpit. This connection between the human and non-human is constantly in flux, thereby leading to the generation and transformation of the knowledge relied upon by cockfighters in each bet.