Mardock Scramble полностью

“Double down,” said the man. The dealer’s upcard was 4. The man’s move was entirely consistent with what was showing on Oeufcoque’s table. The man added his chips to the pile and drew a 9. Total nineteen. When you called “double down,” you were permitted to draw only one additional card—so this was about as good as it got, as far as the monocled man was concerned.

The game progressed, and Balot stayed on her hand.

The dealer’s hidden card was a 7. He drew another card, a 5—total seventeen.

Balot lost, as did all the other players except for the monocled man.

They moved to the next hand. The monocled man she was watching had an 8 and a 6.

“Double down.”

For a moment Balot thought that she had heard wrong. But the man was placing another pile of chips on the table.

The dealer’s upcard was a 3. According to Oeufcoque’s tactical grid, he should be staying rather than drawing. The card that the man drew, however, was a 7.

Twenty-one.

The player’s face broke out into a satisfied grin. He’d now be looking at a major payout, as long as the dealer didn’t get a blackjack himself.

The monocled man had his wish granted when the dealer bust and lost. All the players—including Balot—were winners that round, but the monocled man won more than the rest of them and was obviously delighted by this fact.

Then in the next hand the man hit on sixteen and won, and the game was brought to a close. During the shuffle the topic of conversation among the players was, rather inevitably, the monocled man’s winning streak.

–The man on the far right is pretty amazing.

–Oh, the dealer has his eye on him.

–Because he’s winning too much?

–Being allowed to win, more like.

Balot didn’t immediately get what Oeufcoque meant.

–Doesn’t the dealer have his eye on him because he’s winning too much?

–No, he’s swallowed the dealer’s bait hook, line, and sinker. He just happens to be winning now, that’s all.

Right at that moment Balot noticed something about the man.

–He seems to be in pain?

The monocled man had the roughest breathing patterns of everyone at the table—by far.

–Good spot.

Encouraged by Oeufcoque’s words, Balot probed further, trying to get to the heart of the matter.

–Is it related to his breathing patterns?

–It is.

–But the man’s winning most of his hands, isn’t he?

–There’s more to this game than the number of hands you win. This statement struck an odd chord with Balot. Then she realized that she was thinking about an important aspect of the game from all the wrong angles.

–Can you tell me how much money everyone has bet so far? How much they’ve lost too?

–Roger that.

No sooner had he spoken than the existing tables on Balot’s hands were joined by detailed records of wins and losses to date for each player—P&Ls for each individual player at the table, as it were.

The most surprising statistic was the running total of the monocled man; in absolute terms he was considerably in the red. The old man was doing the best, closely followed by the Doctor. Balot had lost fairly heavily at first but was now keeping her losses down to about half the rate she was losing at the start. The monocled man and the lady were both roughly on a par with each other; that is to say, they were both losing considerably more than they were winning.

It was almost as if the more hands the monocled man won, the more he ended up losing overall.

–I never would have guessed that the man was losing so much money!

–Nobody would have—that’s kind of the idea.

–And is that because of the dealer?

What other explanation could there be? Somehow, the dealer was managing to beguile the man’s senses, causing him to lose track of his numbers.

–Well, it’s partly because of the way blackjack works, of course, and the man’s personality only exacerbates this. But the dealer has a hand in it too—I can smell something deliberate about the way he’s stringing the man along.

–Deliberate? In what way?

–In a most ingenious and subtle way…