The shuffle had finished. This time it was the lady who inserted the red marker into the cards. The dealer cut the cards again in a well-practiced movement, and it was time for the fourth round since Balot and the Doctor had taken their seats.
The old man was now effectively on the far right, the monocled man having left a vacant spot. The dealer now dealt to the old man’s tempo, reading his breathing patterns like a book. The old man was a much tougher nut to crack than the monocled man, however. Nothing seemed to perturb him. The lady next to him bet extravagantly, and the Doctor gave a convincing impression of someone betting extravagantly, and this made the old man’s actions seem particularly composed by contrast.
The dealer occasionally engaged him in conversation, offering his Confucianesque platitudes as before, but not in a way obviously designed to lead the old man astray, as with the monocled man.
The dealer said, “You certainly do seem to know this game inside out, sir. I bet people are always coming to you for advice.”
The dealer said, “There aren’t many people on this floor who know how to enjoy the game as much as you, sir.”
The dealer said, “They say that the more experience you have of life, the more likely you are to enjoy this game in a meaningful way. It seems to me, sir, that you have it all worked out—you know how to enjoy the game in the company of others as much as you play for your own benefit.”
The dealer said, “That hit was the obvious choice, wasn’t it, sir, considering the number of chips you had riding on that hand?”
The old man responded to the last of these sayings. “No, no, it was actually rather a reckless move on my part. Normally I try not to let the number of chips affect my game.”
The old man corrected the dealer without a second thought, and the dealer looked suitably chastened, as if he had spoken out of place and overstepped the mark. He bowed his head slightly.
The old man was a circumspect player, and his cautious style of play was particularly in evidence when he was dealt a blackjack.
His judgment call with such a hand—an ace and jack—told Balot everything she needed to know about his style of play.
“Even money,” called the old man. This was a special move that a player could make only when they had been dealt twenty-one. This declaration guaranteed the player victory—at the expense of reducing his payout from one and a half times the original stake to evens.
The only advantage to this move was to circumvent the possibility of a draw with the dealer; if the dealer drew twenty-one as well, the player would still win even money. It was, in other words, a particularly cautious move.
The dealer said nothing. It was hard to imagine that he was doing anything to string the old man along.
According to Oeufcoque, though, this too must still have been some part of the dealer’s strategy to induce the player to give up all his chips one way or another. Balot just couldn’t quite work out how—yet.
But then Balot noticed something out of the ordinary.
The woman’s losses were increasing exponentially. It was almost as if she were deliberately trying to throw her money down the drain. It was just after the fifteen-hand mark, and she was already down by well over seventy thousand dollars.
Despite this, the woman showed no sign of worrying about where her next chips were coming from. It was as if she had a bank of chips on hand that she could draw from without limit whenever hers needed replenishing.
Then Balot had her epiphany.
The woman
The woman hit on a thirteen, drawing a 10. Bust. Bad luck, plain and simple—it was the right move, nothing wrong about her style of play.
But the number of chips she had riding on just that one hand—now, that was something else. The dealer raked in well over a thousand dollars from her.
Balot, the Doctor, and the old man all won that hand.
In other words, the lady was the only one who lagged behind.
Not that this seemed to bother her in the slightest. “I just have this feeling that my luck’s about to turn any minute,” she murmured.
To whom? To the old man, of course. “Well, why don’t you give your luck a run for its money, then,” he replied, a broad, generous smile covering his face.
The woman grabbed a pile of chips with her chubby fingers. Where from? The old man’s basket of chips, of course.
Balot
