by Ubukata, Tow
–Right, now for the next few hands, try shifting your position constantly—from left to right, as if you’re trying to see the cards out of the corner of your eye.
The Doctor hit and received his card. His total was now seventeen, and he stayed. During this, Balot shifted her body so that her back was half turned to the Doctor.
It became her turn, and she hit on fourteen to take her up to eighteen.
Instead of responding immediately, she crossed her legs again, looked at the cards from the left corner of her field of vision, and declared her intention to stay.
The dealer couldn’t take his eyes off Balot—they were still glued to her as he flipped his own hidden card over.
The dealer had two 9s—total eighteen. A draw with Balot; the Doctor was defeated.
Balot asked Oeufcoque a question as the cards on the table were collected.
–What are we trying to do now?
–Humans have a natural tendency to order things in their mind, to put things into neat boxes so that they can better understand them. We need to make sure that the visual cues we give off are consistent with that—in other words, we need to look as we’re supposed to be feeling.
–I don’t understand at all…
–For example, when you’re thinking about something you really like, your eyes look to your left. When there’s something you don’t like the idea of, your eyes shift to your far right. When you think about something you admire, they fix on a point in the distance somewhat to the left. Oh, there are plenty of individual variations on the theme, of course, but statistically speaking most people tend to have the same “tells”—there’s a fixed pattern. Those who are skilled manipulators can train themselves to be able to read people by just their eyes and body language, working out their opponent’s thoughts and feelings without them even saying a word.
–This dealer is checking me out?
–Of course—it’s one of the basic principles of psychological manipulation. As I said, not just eye movements but also the positioning of your hands and feet, the way your face is turned, the slope of your shoulders: all these are supposed to be a map, a diagram to someone’s current psychological state.
Balot looked at her cards and couldn’t help but feel a scowl, even if she didn’t show it. Had the dealer really been watching her so all along? Like a Peeping Tom? It wasn’t a nice feeling.
Determined to destroy the picture that the dealer had so assiduously drawn, Balot now shifted this way and that. Then sometimes she would confuse him further by refusing to respond at all to the cards, keeping her posture frozen. It didn’t take much. The dealer, who had been ruling the roost at his table, manipulating the players every which way, was now dancing to Balot’s tune—and he didn’t even realize it.
She would smile aimlessly, apropos of nothing, and the dealer would be forced to smile back. Then she would go all grumpy, causing the dealer to turn serious, wondering what the matter could be. Before long, Balot was sure that if she asked him to jump, his only response would be “How high?”
–I think the time is now ripe to enlist the Doctor to our cause.
As Oeufcoque spoke, Balot noticed that a new strategy chart appeared on her left hand—the Doctor’s moves.
Balot waited for the Doctor to bust, then offered to help.
–Looks like I’m better than you at predicting the cards, Uncle. I’ll give you some tips on what you need to do to win.
The Doctor raised a finger and wagged it from side to side, as if to say his pride wouldn’t permit him to take advice from a girl. “Don’t you worry about me. It might look like I’m losing at the moment, but you never know when my luck might start to turn.”
Balot smiled, but under the table she nudged the Doctor softly with her tiptoe. The Doctor nudged her back. Confirmation. He’d understood the plan. However many sensors there may have been overhead, none of them would have been able to see under the table, surely? There wasn’t any watching the customer down there. Not usually.
Starting from the very next hand, Balot fed Oeufcoque’s instructions to the Doctor under the table.
First, one tap on the side of the Doctor’s foot. The signal to hit. The Doctor hmmed.
Then the dealer brushed against his earpiece and whispered a few words into the built-in microphone.
Balot intercepted the electronic transmission in order to eavesdrop on it, a reflex reaction now. She snarced the electronic waves, turning them to sound waves inside her head.
Balot was stunned by the message. It was a transmission to the observation room. Asking them to check the cameras. To check if she was somehow giving the Doctor a signal.
She sensed the piercing gaze of the dealer bearing down on her face like the muzzle of a gun. She was about to turn and meet his gaze when Oeufcoque stopped her.
–Don’t look at the dealer. It’s just a trick to try and catch out people with guilty consciences. To smoke them out of their den. Stay still. You’re not doing anything illegal.
Yes—this was an accomplished dealer, and they couldn’t overlook that fact, even when he was starting to fall under their spell. All it took was his intuition—a sixth sense, almost—to work out that something underhanded was going on. Still, it was as Oeufcoque said: as long as they weren’t caught in the act, there was nothing the casino could pin on them, however suspicious they were. There were limits to the dealer’s abilities. And there was no way for the casino to tell for sure whether the pair at the table were indeed sitting ducks, or whether they were a ticking time bomb, biding their time before going off with an almighty bang, leaving only a huge bill in their wake.
Balot stuck to the important hands, giving the Doctor his signal as subtly as she could. Two nudges of the foot to stay, one to hit. Three when he had to double down. On the rare occasions he was supposed to split, Balot was to tug on his sleeve as if to hurry him up.
The dealer seemed to be picking up on many of these signals, or so she thought, but then he appeared to lose interest, as if he had been worrying over nothing. Balot’s efforts at misdirection had obviously paid off.
Suddenly it occurred to Balot to inject a bit of life into the proceedings. She wanted to revive the sitcom atmosphere of earlier, get her double act with the Doctor back on the road. She prodded his arm playfully.
–I’ve got it, Uncle! I’ve worked out a foolproof plan to win.
The Doctor’s eyes opened wide in surprise. The dealer, caught up in the moment, did the same.
“What sort of plan?” asked the Doctor.
–Before I go into that, I want to change some of my chips.
“Well, it’s not me you should be asking, then, is it? Ask Mr. Handsome over there on the other side of the table.”
Balot nodded and turned to the dealer to offer him a single thousand-dollar chip.
–I’d like to change this into a thousand one-dollar chips, please.
Time stood still as the dealer and the Doctor turned to stare at Balot.
–That way, I’ll be able to make a thousand bets with just this single chip!
The Doctor was the first to break the silence. “Where’s the fun in that?”
Balot puffed her cheeks out in a sulk. It was a convincing act, if she did think so herself. She was sure that this was one of the skills that she had picked up since she first met Oeufcoque.
“Look, gambling is fun precisely because there’s an element of risk. It’s a nice idea you’re suggesting, but it’s kind of missing the whole point of what a casino is about. Please—if you want to play a game, let’s think up one that involves trying to win as much as we can, not one that just involves trying to survive as long as we can…”
–Okay, okay. I’ll just win lots, then.
The Doctor was visibly relieved. He turned to the dealer to give him an apologetic look that said, Sorry about this, it’s her first time, and you know what young girls are like…
The dealer managed to pull himself together long enough to flash the
Doctor a brief, sympathetic smile. But his confusion remained, more palpable than ever.
Surely at this point the usual thing for her to do would be to throw caution to the wind and start betting big? And yet she was talking about whittling her stake down to a feeble dollar-a-pop! The dealer’s face started to show all this—and the fact that he just couldn’t work out what Balot was thinking.
She seemed indifferent when she was winning but got excited when she was losing. She got emotionally attached to cards—all gooey and sentimental—whether she won or lost, and it was impossible to tell what she was being sentimental about. Her conversation was all over the place, but somehow she managed to come up with all sorts of nonsensical rules and fun and games with her uncle.
Worst of all, though, she was winning—not in a big way, he didn’t think, but steadily, ominously. In all his career, he had yet to come across a customer quite so baffling and inexplicable.
The point tally displayed by Oeufcoque showed that the odds at this point were now overwhelmingly in the players’ favor, but just as Balot was about to press home her advantage, the red marker appeared. The round was brought to an end just before things started to get really interesting.
Balot took a deep breath and checked the statistics for the round. The percentages were comprehensively in their favor: averaged with the Doctor, the two of them had managed to win at a rate of well over 60 percent. Or to put it in simple terms, an initial stake of ten dollars would be, on average, increased to seventy dollars within ten hands. As far as winning streaks went, this was overwhelming.
–It’s all going to hinge on this next round. Use the shuffle to convert all your chips into ten-thousand-dollar pieces.
Oeufcoque ordered, and Balot followed. The result was an intimidatingly tall stack of high-value chips, right in front of her.
The dealer touched his earphone again to order replacement chips for the ones he had paid out. The manager replied, and the dealer quickly cut him off in a low voice. I’ll get them all back, and more. Balot intercepted the whole exchange.
Balot shrugged her shoulders. She felt exceedingly calm.
06
The dealer started his shuffle and Balot scrutinized his movements.
She could sense the intention behind his movements more clearly than ever. It was as though he were no longer concerned with keeping up appearances. As a result Balot could read the complex patterns of the cards as they flowed left and right—they shone like neon cafeteria signs in the night.
–He’s trying to manipulate the shuffle so as to force the high-value cards toward the bottom of the stack, out of our reach.
Oeufcoque understood immediately.
–Can you tell how many he’s trying to take out of play?
–As many as he can. He’s trying to make sure all the tens—including the royals—end up at the bottom of the shoe.
–In that case, we consider those cards discarded from play. Try and get as accurate a reading as you can for me so that I can adjust the count accordingly.
–Okay.
The dealer’s fingertips moved smoothly and with great accuracy. Ironically, his very skill made it all the easier for Balot to read his movements.
The Doctor was given the red marker, and he shoved it into the pile of cards haphazardly. The dealer performed another cut—a stealthy, swift movement, one much too quick for the naked eye to follow. And indeed Balot didn’t follow it, not with her eyes at least. But the Lightite skin that covered her entire body was sensitive enough to the sudden movement, and she read it like a book.
–Thirty-two cards in total. Every single one of them worth ten.
–So he’s taken two decks’ worth of tens and royals and removed them from play. What a move…
Oeufcoque seemed simultaneously impressed and blasé.
The point tally changed, dropping immediately to minus eighty. The value of the optimal stake per hand also plummeted accordingly. It was time to batten down the hatches and play defensively.
The first cards came. A 6 and 3. Small cards. Balot tried to bring to mind the sensation of what had happened when the dealer last cut the cards. Remembering, feeling which cards surrounded the clumps of ten cards before they were stealthily removed.
She looked over to the Doctor to see he had a 2 and 5. He hit twice, eventually settling on a total of seventeen, at which point he stayed. Balot also hit twice, bringing her total to nineteen.
The dealer’s upcard was a 6. The hidden card was a 2. He drew three cards, bringing his total to nineteen, meaning the Doctor lost and Balot drew, and her chips returned to her.
The next hand saw Balot with a total of twelve, and she hit. She received a 5. When would her luck change? It was all about trying to pin down the precise moment.
Balot stared at her cards, then made her mind up.
According to Oeufcoque’s tactics the right move was to stay. Yet Balot chose to hit. She received a 6. Bust. But this was no longer about the hand. There was a bigger picture.
The dealer quickly collected Balot’s spent cards. As he did so, Balot intuitively grasped the thickness of the pile of remaining cards and chose her moment carefully.
She promptly reconfirmed her bankroll, then plucked out a handful of chips as if she were wrenching them from the mountainous pile. Then she waited.
The dealer revealed his cards. He had eleven and drew a 7 to bring his total up to eighteen.
As a result the Doctor lost, and the dealer collected the Doctor’s cards too.
Balot placed her chips on the table as the dealer made his move. The clink of the chips as they landed on the table distracted the dealer for a moment, causing him to take his eyes from the discard pile. He looked somewhat stunned.
Balot ignored the dealer and turned to the Doctor.
–I have to use them up, really, it’s not fair to the chips otherwise.
The Doctor grunted and appeared to be thinking deeply, but then he announced, “Very well, then. Bring it on!” Throwing caution to the wind he placed a pile of ten-thousand-dollar chips on the table in front of him.
Up until this moment Balot and the Doctor had both been extremely cautious with their opening bets.
This was the correct tactic when counting, after all. The true count was zero at the start of a new round, so it was only prudent to start the betting low and increase their stakes only when the cards started to play in their favor. Balot and the Doctor had been doing their best to cover up the fact that they were doing just that, but even so the dealer would have surely worked out by now that they always started each new game cautiously, even if he didn’t suspect that the tactic was part of their card counting.
The dealer may have worked us out, thought Balot, but we have him worked out even better.
The dealer seemed in better spirits as he put his hand to the card shoe.
First the dealer’s upcard appeared. An 8.
Then the Doctor’s first card. A 10. Then Balot received her card. Also a 10. Then the dealer’s hidden card was dealt. Then the Doctor’s second card. Another 10. Balot’s second card came. Again, a 10.
There were four tens on the table in front of them now. Balot tapped the Doctor’s arm—twice.
–You’ll never beat me unless you stop being so stingy with your chips.
The Doctor put on a troubled face before eventually coming to a decision. Not hitting, not staying, but rather the third option.
“Split.”
The Doctor used his two index fingers to signal his cards being pulled apart.
Then he placed another pile of chips, equal to his original stake, on the table, beside the card that no longer had a stake covering it.
The dealer drew and placed a third card next to one of the Doctor’s. Incredibly, this card too was a 10.
“Stay.”
The Doctor was dealt yet another card. Yet again another 10.
–Look, you can go again if you want, Uncle! If you have the guts, that is…
&nb
sp; Balot tapped the Doctor’s arm again.
“Of course…” said the Doctor, and the dealer’s face showed a flash of panic when he saw the Doctor take yet another pile of chips in his hands. “Split.”
Another 10.
The Doctor peered at the dealer’s upcard and hummed, “I think I’d better stay this time.”
In response the dealer now moved on to the second of the Doctor’s two original cards and dealt again. Another 10.
“Split,” the Doctor called again, and again he thrust forward more chips. The dealer was breathing heavily now and seemed to be in some pain. Still, he managed to deal another card to the Doctor. A 10 again. The Doctor stayed. Then another card, for the last split, and yet another 10.
“Stay, I think…” the Doctor said casually. Then he turned to Balot and laughed broadly. “Well, I’ve had a good enough run for my money, don’t you think? Now let’s see if you can do any better.”
–I’ll split too.
The dealer’s face was now drained of all expression, and he was staring at the pile of chips that Balot was preparing to add to the table.
Her card came. It was another 10. The dealer had done his best to contain them, but he couldn’t get them all, and here was the surplus, spilling out uncontrollably, just where he didn’t want them—like the clubs in poker that nobody seemed to want. Like stray dollar bills sticking out the sides of a hastily closed trunk.
–Stay.
For a moment the dealer seemed relieved. But then Balot’s other card received a 10 to go with it.
Balot re-split, received another 10, and stayed. Her second re-split card also received another 10, and she re-split again. And so on and so on. It was only when she came to the sixth split that she drew a 7 and finally stopped.
The dealer looked like a bank robber hemmed in by police on all sides. Police with advance notice of when the break-in was due to take place. The dealer’s shaking hand moved toward his own cards now, slowly turning over his hidden card, well aware that it was the pin to a hand grenade that was about to blow up in his face.
The dealer’s hidden card was a 10. Bringing the total number of tens on the table up to twenty.