Mardock Scramble - Volume 3 - Chapter 9

Book III:
THE THIRD EXHAUST
Chapter 9
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To survive—that was what Balot thought in response to the cards that were dealt to her.
She had no intention of being killed a second time without putting up some resistance. Instead she was
here so that she could grasp her enemy’s heart in her hand, and in order to do that she had to stay in the
game at all costs. She had to survive the game that the man called Shell had drawn her into. She had to
make the game her own and solve her case.
Blackjack—that was the name of this, the last game in the casino.
The dealer dealt the cards, starting from the right. The first card Balot was dealt was the queen of
clubs. Worth ten points, a good card, a useful card. The suit was irrelevant in this game.
–Wow, clubs really are your suit. They helped you win at poker too, didn’t they? Oeufcoque’s
words floated up inside the glove covering her left hand.
–Is this a good omen, do you think?
–Well, it’s not a bad one.
Oeufcoque said this to calm Balot down, to make her feel better. Balot clung to these words, clasping
her hands together as if in prayer, and watched as the dealer’s upcard was revealed. Unfortunately, it was
the ace of clubs.
–How’s that not bad?
She couldn’t stop herself. Inside her gloves, though, Oeufcoque just shrugged, she thought.
Then Balot’s second card was dealt to her. Another club. But a 6 this time. Her total was now sixteen.
Her eyes flew involuntarily to the dealer’s second card. The card that faced down, next to the ace.
She heard the voice of the monocled man who sat at the far right of the table, bold and resolute, calling
for another card—hit.
Balot was about to look toward him, but Oeufcoque quickly stopped her.
–You don’t need to worry about other people’s cards just yet.
Balot looked down at her cards. The problem wasn’t the cards but Balot herself. Suddenly her heart
started racing. What if she got it wrong? For the first time since she had entered the casino, Balot felt
nervous. She tried to remember what sort of number sixteen was, but found that she couldn’t. What had the
Doctor said to her again? Was it a good number or a bad number?
She heard the monocled man calling stay. The old man stayed too.
The woman hit—then paused a moment before staying.
“Hit.” The Doctor’s voice, right next to her. Her heart skipped a beat. It took every ounce of her selfcontrol
not to look at the Doctor’s cards. Her heart pounded hard, and she was in turmoil. A veritable
earthquake.
“Stay,” said the Doctor. He was going to weather this one out.
Balot raised her head. Her eyes met the dealer’s. She was sucked in completely.
–Hit.
The dealer dealt her third card in a well-rehearsed move, turning the card over in front of her with
machinelike precision. Jack of spades. She felt like she had been stabbed by the spade itself.
“Bust.” The dealer reported the outcome as everything was swept away. Her cards and her chips, all
gone in an instant. And with it, the game, at least for this round. The dealer collected them all and
deposited themin their designated places, then turned his hidden card over.
It was a 7. According to the rules, this made a soft eighteen—the ace and the 7. This meant that Balot
would have lost regardless of whether she stayed or hit. So hitting might have been the right decision after
all.
Or was it?
She heard a humming sound. It was the monocled man. Had Balot not called just then, the one-eyed
jack—jack of spades—would have come to him. Tough luck.
In blackjack, where you chose to sit—and whom you chose to sit next to—could end up influencing
your game considerably. Someone who drew cards needlessly could spoil things for everyone else and in
particular the players right next to you—Balot remembered the Doctor telling her something like this. This
factor worked in the dealer’s favor.
And yet a moment ago she hadn’t been able to remember anything. Balot reproached herself.
The dealer divided up the winners and the losers in much same way you would sort through the
contents of your pockets—things you needed, things you didn’t. This time it was the Doctor and the old
man who had won. Their money doubled.
–Let’s move on to the first step of our plan , Oeufcoque said as if the preceding game had never
happened.
–What was I supposed to do back there? Did I make the right move?
–The first thing you need to do is be able to work out the answer to that question for yourself.
That hardly answered her question. Balot silently placed her next chips down. She felt bitterly
disappointed.
Balot’s next card was a 2. She ignored the suit this time. Then a 5—total seven.
The dealer’s upcard was a jack. Ten points. And so the game began again, based on the cards in
Balot’s hand versus the upcard.
–I’m going to display your funds, Oeufcoque’s words floated up.
First, Balot’s entire bankroll. Next to that, her working capital, divided into ten equal parts. Then, the
maximum and the minimum that she could bet per game. Finally, the total amount she had spent so far.
That was the money management systemdevised by Oeufcoque.
The basis of a sound strategy in a casino was neither a head for figures nor an eye for human
psychology. It was more fundamental than that; you needed an effective system to keep track of your
money.
According to the odds, it was not possible in the long run to turn the house edge around—statistically
the numbers were against the player. But that was the long run. In the short run, it was perfectly possible
for the player to enjoy a winning streak. The key factor was this: when riding the crest of the wave of a
winning streak, keep track of the funds in play and manage the bank to stay in play through the drier
patches.
Balot had just put down three hundred dollars in chips. The same amount as in the previous hand. The
amount wasn’t a true representation of Balot’s feelings. It was just a tactical sum, an expeditionary force.
Balot’s total bankroll at that precise moment was just over $630,000.
So one tenth of this would be her “mini-bank,” enough for one session.
This worked out to be slightly over $63,000. They’d take a break once this was used up one way or
another; that was the idea.
The maximum bet on any particular hand would be one twentieth of the mini-bank, and the minimum
bet—i.e. the basic unit—one tenth of that.
In other words, at the moment Balot should start with bets of just over three hundred dollars.
When the maximum bet per hand was one tenth of the mini-bank, there would be a one percent
possibility of losing all their capital. If, though, they adjusted their bets according to the flow of play and
the fluctuation in their funds, it would be possible to limit the chance of bankruptcy to less than 0.01
percent.
–Well, let’s start of by seeing what we can do.
After the numbers had been shown on Balot’s right hand, this message came up on her left before
disappearing in an instant.
That was the moment Balot realized why she was so nervous.
It was because there was so little that she could do. The only thing the players had any influence over
in these games was the chips. Partly to preempt the possibility of cheating, players weren’t even allowed
to touch their own cards.
Not for this game the psychological warfare of poker or the finely tuned sensory perception involved
in roulette. All there was to do here was walk the tightrope of uncertainty over and over again.
This was why she felt unusually impatient and susceptible to being swept away by the action.
But the key to successfully traversing that tightrope wasn’t just luck. It was a meaningful activity
precisely because it was possible to separate out the factors that you could influence from the factors that
you couldn’t. This was the lesson—indeed, the first principle—that Oeufcoque and the Doctor had
hammered into her fromday one.
This was all reverberating inside her now, in her mind, in her heart.
Before long it was Balot’s turn. She looked at her cards again. A 2 and 5, a total of seven.
–Hit.
A no-brainer. There wasn’t a single card she could draw at this point that would make her go bust. In
fact, for all intents and purposes her next card could be considered her real second card. The card came,
and it was an 8—and now her total was fifteen.
The upcard was a jack, ten points. The dealer had to keep on drawing until he reached seventeen or
higher, those were the rules. The only way Balot could win with her fifteen was if the dealer bust.
Wouldn’t it be better for her to draw another card, then? This, rather than any complicated statistical
calculation, was Balot’s rationale for her next move.
–Hit.
Her heart missed a beat as she proclaimed her next move. In a different way from the previous hand,
though; she felt that this was somehow her choice this time, rather than a move she made involuntarily
while swept up in the flow of the game.
The fourth card was revealed right in front of her eyes in a swift movement. The number was 7. Her
total was twenty-two.
“Bust.”
Her chips dissipated into the ether, just like with the previous hand.
It stands to reason, seemed the general feeling at the table. Why, after all, should it be easy for a little
girl like her to master the deep mysteries of such a game? The dealer and the other players could have
told her that.
That was fine with Balot. It was no more than the truth, after all. Part of her did really feel this way,
and it seemed for a moment that there was a different version of herself sitting in the chair.
The dealer drew his card and it was a 6—his total was now sixteen. As per his obligation under the
rules he drew another. A 5. Total twenty-one. There were sighs all around.
Had Balot not drawn her last card, the dealer would have gone bust, and everyone at the table would
have won.
Instead, as a result of Balot’s actions, everyone lost. Having said that, Balot was no longer bothered.
If you wanted to win, you should have predicted what cards I was going to draw, she thought,
unapologetic.
Everyone’s chips were collected, and a new game began. After that Balot lost two more hands, won
one, and then seemed to settle into a pattern of winning and losing alternate hands.
When you were destined to lose a hand you lost it, no matter how you bet or what you tried—that was
blackjack.
You could lose because you had drawn a card, and you could lose because you hadn’t.
You could draw on a twelve and bust, or you could stay on a sixteen and lose because of it. Then there
were those hands where you were always going to lose whether you drew another card or not, because
the dealer simply had a better hand. This happened not once or twice, but repeatedly.
On the other hand, it could go the other way—you didn’t have to do anything and could simply win
over and over again. Whatever you did, whatever the other players did. Call it luck if you like, but such
luck didn’t just come out of nowhere; many battles were fought, and people had struggled with tactics and
strategy to work out the optimal course of play through blood, sweat, and tears before finally reaching the
depths of the game.
The battle raged on, a microcosmof Balot’s inner turmoil.
Win or lose, it was all in vain if she didn’t manage to keep a cool head and a steady hand.
–Concentrate on your breathing.
Oeufcoque had to remind her constantly of this.
Balot knew for herself that this was the best way for her to stay in control.
Even when she had learned to use a gun, the first thing she mastered was her breathing. The Doctor
had drummed it into her that it was what she needed to focus on at all times; when she was first taken to
the hideaway, after the trial, whenever she had a headache.
Balot concentrated on the feeling of what it was like when she was at her most relaxed and tried to
remember what her breathing felt like then, inhaling, then exhaling. She had always thought that breathing
was one of those things that happened of its own accord, varying from hard to gentle depending on the
circumstances, but when she actually put her mind to it and focused she was surprised at how much she
could control her breath and how much in turn that improved her composure and her mood.
When she breathed deeply into her stomach, she felt relief. When she breathed into her chest, she felt
hope. When she breathed into her shoulders she felt her whole pulse quickening, and when she breathed
focusing on her pulse she felt a strong sense of identity, of knowing the ins and outs of her body.
Her aim now was to ensure that she would be able to breathe consistently and calmly, regardless of
whether she won or lost at the table.
Turning her mind to this made her realize just how stiff she had become since sitting down.
Curiously, it wasn’t even the high stakes that were making her feel tense and uncomfortable.
Six hundred thousand dollars—an unthinkable sumof money in her previous life.
As the Doctor said, it wouldn’t be at all strange if she’d wanted to just take the money and run,
forgetting all about the case.
But the hatred that she felt burning away inside her was not about to accept the consolation prize of
mere money.
The hatred that she felt was in fact for the money itself, and also for those people who were its slave.
Virtually everyone she knew who was motivated by money ended up coming to grief one way or another.
Not only that, the more grief they came to the further they got sucked in and the more they started believing
that money would solve all their problems. The more money you had the more you could do with it, true,
but also the more it ended up doing to you.
This was why it was no longer simply a question of money for Balot. She had been hurt by other
peoples’ pursuit of money, but now it was time to turn the tables and to use that very money that had hurt
her as her tool to do it. Balot was fired up, but she wouldn’t let this fire disrupt her game. She breathed in
deeply, determined to stay in control so that she was ready to make the right decisions no matter what the
game threw at her.
She was a long way away from certain victory—indeed, her first mini-bank was slowly but surely
being eaten away. At the moment it was a case of one step forward, two steps back. But neither were
there any unpleasant surprises—it was all going according to their calculations. It was all there for the
taking. All there was to do was hope for the best and plow on, best foot forward.
As they were approaching the thirtieth hand, Balot suddenly realized something.
Something was up with the dealer. She tried to pinpoint exactly what.
When her turn came, she thought she would try something to test her observation.
–Hit.
For a moment, the dealer was thrown off-kilter. One of the reasons for this was Balot’s cards.
A queen and 9. Nineteen in total. It was hardly the usual thing to draw on this sort of hand.
The dealer flipped the card over. It was a 2. Balot’s rather irrational move had worked in her favor,
and she felt a disturbance in the breathing patterns of everyone at the table.
Her total was twenty-one—her first since sitting down at the table.
The dealer turned over his hidden card, which was a 10.
Total: twenty. Balot was the only one to win. All eyes were on Balot as the dealer calmly paid out her
winnings.
It didn’t take long, though, before everyone dismissed it as a fluke and went back about their business.
Balot hadn’t expected to win. That fact probably registered on her face.
She was onto something, though—she was sure of it. As she received her winnings, she thought about
it.
Mainly about whether it was something significant, not what the significance was. Not yet, anyway.
–Oeufcoque, there’s something I want to ask you.
–What is it?
–I think the dealer is timing his deals. Aiming for the right moment.
–Aiming?
–Yeah, waiting until the instant we finish fullyexhaling before he deals.
So far, it was a fragile hypothesis—had Oeufcoque dismissed it out of hand as ludicrous, she wasn’t
sure she would have been able to defend it.
But Oeufcoque’s answer struck an unexpected chord.
–How did you work that out?
As if to say that he was just about to tell her that fact himself. Balot’s suspicions were confirmed, and
her vague hunch became a firmconviction that she was onto something important.
–I deliberatelytook a long breath. He waited for me to finish before dealing.
–Well, seeing as you’ve managed to work that out for yourself, the first stage of our work here is
complete. You’re on course to secure victory with your own two hands.
Half of her was delighted by the unexpected words of encouragement and praise, but at the same time
she was more discouraged than ever—she seemed so near and yet so far.
–That’s not true at all. I’m losing steadily and I have no idea how I’m going to turn it around.
–Don’t worry. You don’t need to start winning yet. All that’s important at this stage is that you lose
in a meaningful way. You’re playing a role in the Doctor’s plan. And you will win yet. With me here to
back you up.
Now Balot was fired up again. She felt supported—as if there were a strong pillar inside her, supple
and flexible, there to prop her up, unbreakable.
–Now that this hand is over, there’ll be a break.
Hearing Oeufcoque’s words, Balot looked at the card shoe. Sure enough, the clear red marker that she
had shoved into the pile of cards was now showing, signifying an imminent reshuffle.
–We’ll move on to the next stage of our plan after the shuf le.
Balot squeezed both her hands tightly by way of reply.
The game halted. The dealer collected all the cards and started the shuffle in a series of smooth
movements.
According to the tally that showed in her right palm, a total of twenty-eight hands had been played so
far. Balot had only won seven of these. Three were draws, and she had lost the remaining eighteen hands.
She was currently down $3,300.
Conversation between the players broke out again.
Balot watched the shuffle. She felt that she might be able to pick something up—the reason he dealt in
tempo with the players’ breathing. Whatever the reason, she had a gut feeling that she’d be able to start
using her abilities shortly. She wasn’t about to surrender her fate to luck.
As she was thinking the Doctor said, “I told you you’d enjoy yourself!” The fat lady next to him was
grinning in her direction too.
Balot nodded. A calm, composed gesture. The Doctor smiled broadly and engaged the lady in
conversation again. He was saying that even an innocent young thing like Balot couldn’t resist the allure
of a game like this. In other words, he was covering for Balot’s somewhat unnatural manner.
Before long the shuffle was over, and the dealer handed the red marker to the monocled man, who
placed it in the pile of cards. The cards were cut, and round two was about to begin.
–Time to move on to stage two of our plan. I’ll give you the basic tactics.
Oeufcoque’s words appeared in her palm, and at the same time a table containing symbols and
numbers started to appear on the other side. Information on how to compare her hand with that of the
dealer.
–I’m going to gradually start feeding you more information.
Balot quickly referenced her card against the chart on her hand.
The rows were her card totals, and the columns the dealer’s upcard. Cross-referencing the two
showed what move would be tactically optimal under what circumstances.
At the moment, her cards were 9 and 5, a total of fourteen. The dealer’s upcard, 5.
The table showed that the appropriate tactic in these circumstances was S—the symbol for stay.
Balot would have played it differently, but she would have been wrong. Under these circumstances,
the best option was not to battle it out but to sweat it out, however odd that seemed to her.
She did as the chart indicated and gave the signal to stay.
The dealer glanced at Balot as he turned over his hidden card. A queen—bringing his total up to
fifteen.
The dealer now had to draw another card—those were the rules, as his total was below seventeen. He
drew a jack. Total twenty-five—bust. Balot was genuinely impressed.
–And I could have sworn that I should have hit.
–That would have been a mistake under those circumstances. The most common value of a card in
this game is ten. There are four dif erent types—the king, queen, jack, and ten. The cards in our hand
have little ef ect on the dealer’s chances of going bust. According to a simple calculation the chance
of drawing a ten is 31 percent—four times as likely as any other card.
–The ten factor, Balot answered Oeufcoque unconsciously. She’d had all this explained to her
already, but it was different in real life, and she had had to experience it to believe it. Balot straightened
herself up and tried to digest the implications of what had just happened.
–So, when the dealer’s upcard is a five, he has a 43 percent chance of going bust. That’s more than
two times out of every five. When that happens and you don’t have a strong hand, your best chance of
winning is to hold tight and wait for the dealer to self-destruct.
After the payouts were completed, the cards for the next hand were dealt. Jack and 6, total sixteen.
The dealer’s upcard was a 7.
The relevant corner of the tactics grid was highlighted. The symbol was H—hit.
Another unexpected move. Balot would have felt more comfortable staying. But she knew that this was
just because she had yet to fully absorb all the information that she had been taught, to assimilate it and
make it her own.
Oeufcoque seemed to sense Balot’s self-reproach and jumped in to explain the logic behind this move.
–If we stay on any number between twelve and sixteen when the dealer has an upcard of seven or
higher, we stand a 75 percent chance of losing. Conversely, when we have a total of seventeen or over
and the dealer has an upcard of between two and six, we’re better of staying—the odds are
overwhelmingly in our favor.
–Seven up. Seventeen or higher for the player, seven or higher for the dealer.
Again the lessons that Balot had been taught came flooding back.
–Exactly right. Whereas the worst sort of hand for us is a fifteen or sixteen, when we can expect to
lose. Here, hitting reduces our chance of losing from 75 percent to 63 percent. Better to move than
not.
Balot obeyed and hit, drawing her third card.
Unfortunately it was a king. Well and truly bust.
The dealer’s next card turned out to be a jack, also worth ten. Total seventeen. Whatever Balot had
done she would have lost. Better to have gone out fighting and taken the chance to improve the odds, even
if she happened to have been unsuccessful this time.
Blackjack was a losers’ game. It was simply impossible to win all the time. The key was not to expect
to win every hand but to play the odds so that you created conditions that were as favorable as possible.
To win, a player needed great staying power—the force of mind to keep on going down that long and
winding road.
The next hand was a case in point. Balot’s hand was a 10 and 5—and a fifteen was fully expected to
lose.
The dealer’s upcard was a queen. Not the time to stay, then. There was the option of surrendering, but
now wasn’t the right time to start retreating and playing defensively. The bankroll was still nice and thick,
and even the first mini-bank was still intact, so it was no time to roll over and play dead.
–Hit.
The dealer glanced at Balot again. He dealt her a 4.
–Stay.
It was Balot’s reflexes that spoke now. Her new total was nineteen. The dealer drew his card. An 8.
Balot and the monocled man were the only winners.
For a brief moment, Balot felt that she had accomplished something tangible, however slight. She
exhaled, deeply.
02
–I think the time is ripe for you to start paying some attention to your surroundings.
Oeufcoque said this, attuned as he was to the subtleties of her feelings, in response to Balot’s
increasing interest in the players all around her. He was now allowing Balot to progress, to do something
that he had previously forbidden.
–Thanks. It’s just that I really want to know how other people are playing. She started to explain
herself, why she was getting so impatient, but Oeufcoque cut her off.
–No need to apologize. It really is most impressive how quick you are at picking up on all this. It’s
on the early side to do so, but I really think you are ready to move on to the third stage.
No sooner had the words floated up on Balot’s hand and registered with her than they disappeared,
replaced by a new set of tables. There was now roughly six times as much information displayed as there
had been before. Specifically tables showing the collated tactics of everyone at the table up to this point,
including the dealer. And the results: how many hands won, how many lost.
The monocled man was in the lead, with the old man and the Doctor not too far behind. The lady and
Balot seemed to be losing hands in equal measure.
Also shown was the regularity with which the dealer bust, roughly one in five times.
The statistics that most interested Balot were those relating to the monocled man. He was on a winning
streak, and an impressive one at that. He was riding the crest of the wave of victory. The question was
whether this was due to the man’s skill or his luck.
The cards were dealt. Balot received a jack and 2.
The monocled man, on the other hand, had a 4 and 6—a total of ten.
“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 themand 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 moneyeveryone 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 himto 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…
The shuffle had finished, and now it was the old man’s turn to stick the transparent red marker into the
stack of cards. The cards were cut, and the monocled man greedily thrust his chips forward. Five hundred
dollars’ worth. Judging by the size of his bet the man ought to have had a total bankroll of close to a
million—but he almost certainly had nothing of the sort.
The first cards were dealt. Balot paid close attention to the timing.
Sure enough, the cards were released the instant the monocled man was out of breath. He took a light
gulp as the first card landed.
The man’s card was a 9. The cards were then dealt to the other players in turn; Balot had a 7 in front
of her.
The dealer’s upcard was a 4. The players’ second cards were dealt in sharp succession, stabbing like
a knife. The man was dealt a 6, and it made himchoke on the air in his throat.
The instant after Balot’s second card was dealt, she heard the man’s voice: “Double down.” Before
she could stop herself she glanced at the man’s cards to double-check what he had. A total of fifteen.
A losing hand, according to all logic. Judging by the way the other players were all watching the hand
like hawks, Balot wasn’t the only one interested in the outcome of the draw.
It was an 8. Total twenty-three, and bust. The man’s face crumpled.
Suddenly Balot realized she ought to think about her own cards. A 7 and jack. A hand to stay.
Somehow her cards were making less of an impression on her than they had been. Not that she was
doing anything wrong because of this; it was a straightforward choice, her cards dictating the obvious
optimal move. Still, there was no doubt she was being distracted by the monocled man and his cards—
sucked into his game, as it were.
–Why am I so compelled to watch this man? Is that because of the dealer too?
She really only asked this question in order to distance herself, to try and refocus her mind. But:
–That’s right. You’re half under the dealer’s spell too.
Balot squirmed inside when she heard these words.
–The dealer’s ultimate aim is to throw you all of balance, so that you end up acting in ways that
you wouldn’t normally. That’s why he’s paying such close attention to all your breathing rhythms and
picking his moment so precisely.
–Breathing rhythms?
–The basis of his techniques. Breath manual, it’s called—aiming for that moment when people are
at their most vulnerable, just in between breaths. The dealer is playing all sorts of tricks by applying
these techniques.
–Such as?
–Well, there are a number of important points to this game. One of these is the dealer’s upcard. As
players, that’s really the first thing we should be paying attention to. But it’s very easy to get sucked
in when we see our own cards—they tend to make much more of an impression on us as players.
–Even though the man is concentrating so hard on the game?
–You can’t really call that concentrating. Absorbed, maybe, but it’s not the same thing.
Oeufcoque was coming across as somewhat harsh now, and Balot straightened her posture in
response. Oeufcoque continued.
–You could say that one of the dealer’s tricks is to manipulate the players’ impressions of the
game. He senses how the players feel, latches on to this, and gradually shifts their perceptions so that
they lose their grip on how their game is actually going. It’s a clever trick, and one that you fell for
too.
–Who, me?
–The man at the end is completely under the dealer’s spell. Whether or not the other players start
copying the man’s style of play, at the very least his game is likely to leave a lasting impression. The
seeds of influence are planted, and all the dealer has to do now is cultivate them, make them grow.
–How?
–Why don’t you and I play a little game?
Balot’s eyes widened. In another world, it had become Balot’s turn at blackjack.
–Stay.
The dealer then proceeded to reveal his hidden card. A 7. Total eleven.
He drew once more, bringing his total to eighteen.
Balot’s chips were taken in by the house again, but the focus of her interest had shifted elsewhere.
–What sort of game?
–From now on a player will leave the table at every new shuf le. Let’s try and guess which one.
–Leave the table? How can you know a thing like that?
–There’s less than an hour to go before this dealer moves on. He’s worked hard to bring the
punters here under his spell and doesn’t want another dealer taking over and reaping the benefit.
Oeufcoque spoke as if the dealer was a big game hunter on the trail of his trophy beasts.
–But what about if someone else comes and joins the table?
–Unlikely at this point. Certainly the dealer isn’t expecting it.
–Why not?
–Since we arrived at this table the dealer stopped looking out at his surroundings. He’s been
deliberately cultivating the impression that this is a close-knit table of friends all playing together—a
closed shop to outsiders.
Balot didn’t ask him how he knew all this. As far as she was concerned her hands were cocooned in a
pair of magic gloves, founts of infinite knowledge and wisdom. Balot just sat there, deeply impressed.
–Why only one at a time, though?
–Everyone breathes dif erently, with dif erent rhythms. If the dealer wants to be certain, that’s
what happens. This dealer intends to pluck the players at his table one by one, thoroughly emptying
their pockets.
She hadn’t really noticed until now, but Balot’s two cards had come. Jack and king, total twenty. She
didn’t need to look at the upcard to know what her move would be. Balot more or less ignored her own
cards and turned her attention to the other players instead.
–The woman.
That was Balot’s guess. The monocled man might have been losing heavily, but she didn’t think he
was the type to give up that easily. The old man was playing steadily and going nowhere in a hurry. If he
did move, it would be on the lady’s orders, to accompany her, probably. And if anyone was going to be
the first to leave it would probably be that fat lady; she was betting extravagantly, losing heavily. Even if
she wanted to stay on, it wouldn’t be too long before she ran out of chips, surely?
–Fine. So if the woman is the one to stand at the next shuf le, you win.
–Why, who do you think it’ll be?
It was Balot’s turn. The dealer was smiling at her, patiently waiting for her to call. It was a gentle
smile, inviting. Doing her best to fight it, she calmly called out her intention to stay.
The result of the hand was that Balot was the only winner. The monocled man, red-faced, called a
waiter over and snatched a glass of gin off his tray, gulping it down to try and cool off in the face of the
heat of the battle.
–The man on the right.
Balot was a little surprised at Oeufcoque’s answer—the monocled man seemed so into the game after
all.
–Anyhow, let’s enjoy the game as it unfolds and pray that no one else joins the table.
Balot felt somewhat placated and placed her chips in front of her. Everyone’s chips were now down,
and the cards were dealt. Balot barely paid attention to her own cards anymore, focusing instead on the
piles of chips in front of the monocled man and the fat lady respectively.
The man bet a minimum of five hundred dollars on every hand, doubling down whenever the
opportunity presented itself.
The woman’s bets fluctuated randomly between around three hundred and a thousand dollars at a time.
Neither showed the slightest inclination of wanting to leave their seats. As long as their bankrolls
were intact, wild horses couldn’t drag themaway.
The next interesting development came at around ten hands after the shuffle. The monocled man had a
seventeen in front of himand boldly charged on, hitting. The card he drew was a 4. Total twenty-one—the
monocled man was the only winner.
“A prudent decision, if I may be so bold as to say so, sir,” the dealer said, without missing a beat, as
he placed the cards in the discard pile. As he did so he placed the 4—the card that had brought the man’s
hand up to the elusive winning total—on the side, as if he were admiring something precious. Balot felt
something akin to an electric shock down her spine and rubbed the back of her neck in a reflex action as
she snarced Oeufcoque.
–Did the dealer saythat on purpose? To manipulate him? Not just out of politeness?
–Hmm…politeness is, in itself, a form of manipulation, of course. But you’re right, that was
somewhat over the top…
–The dealer was talking as if the man in the monocle was something special. What a kiss-ass!
–Well, some people like having their asses kissed, as you put it. And it opens up a chink in their
armor. This dealer’s got it all worked out—which words he needs to use with which person in order to
lay them bare. So that they enjoy themselves even as they’re losing, being bled dry of their last dollar.
Balot’s nose wrinkled as if she smelled something burning. To enjoy yourself even as you’re losing .
This was all that a lot of people wanted, she supposed. Amusement was king. To head in with a cool head
and a steady hand—this was the sort of player the casino really didn’t want.
The festive, elegant atmosphere, the service nonpareil, the elegant courtesy—strip that away and all
that remained was the house edge that shaved away at the customers’ chips, gently but surely. That was
why it was called the edge after all; it was as deadly and as certain as the sharpest of knives.
It was then that it occurred to Balot that she really could lose her bankroll here.
What would happen if she had to start all over? What about the trial? And would she really end up a
suspect of crimes against the Commonwealth? Could she go back to an existence where all that was left
was to endure, day in, day out? Her skin crawled at the thought.
Suddenly the game she was playing didn’t seem so interesting anymore. She had lost all thought of
amusement. Everything was riding on this battle—her whole world. She couldn’t allow herself to be
flustered by a dealer such as this one.
–Cool it.
A strong admonition from Oeufcoque. He sounded blunt—harsh, even—but it was a clear sign of just
how attuned he was to Balot’s thoughts and feelings. He wasn’t about to let her make a grave mistake.
–Before you go charging in, you need to have the full measure of your opponent. Forewarned is
forearmed.
Balot squeezed her left hand in lieu of a nod. Tightly. Then she focused her full attention on the game
at hand. On the dealer. On the other players. And on the cards. Telling herself that the long and winding
road could yet be the shortest and surest route to her final destination. After all, hadn’t Oeufcoque and the
Doctor been right about everything so far, showing her the best path to take?
Oeufcoque’s words were sinking in properly. The full measure of your opponent—Oeufcoque wasn’t
just helping her out of a rut. He was teaching her. Empowering her. Showing her how to fight against her
own powerlessness. So that she could win. He was showing her that she had a chance, a choice. She felt
fiercely in tune with the mouse at that moment.
Her reverie was interrupted by the voice of the monocled man. “Is this the sort of hand I should hit
with, would you say?” He was asking, of all people, the dealer.
The man’s total was fifteen.
The dealer’s upcard was 8.
It was a delicate call, certainly. But the dealer answered without hesitation. “It depends on the
circumstances, of course, but if you were playing by the book then the correct move would be to hit, sir.”
A first-class dealer was always ready to respond to such questions fromthe player. He would have all
the possible combinations memorized, ready to reel them off pat. A dealer who didn’t know the 290-odd
possibilities “by the book” wasn’t a first-class dealer.
“Having said that, it’s up to the player’s mood whether he wants to double down,” the dealer
continued calmly.
Doubling down seemed to have become something of a signature tune for the monocled man.
“Of course, those who want to determine the flow of the game have to be prepared to pay the price.”
The monocled man nodded in agreement with the dealer’s words and boldly hit. A jack to his fifteen.
Bust.
But the man now had his eyes closed; he seemed to take at face value the dealer’s suggestion that it
was inevitable he had to pay the price and just shrugged his shoulders.
–It’s a double bind.
–A double bind?
–That’s what it’s called when you manage to implant an idea in your opponent’s mind, inducing
them to act in a certain way. The way the dealer handled that then, by mentioning the doubling down—
it made hitting become the default option for the player.
–But that was the right decision, wasn’t it?
–As a basic tactic, yes, it was the right move. But the basic tactics stop being of any use once
you’re under the dealer’s spell. What he’s doing is conditioning the man’s mind, ridding him of the
possibility of any move but hitting.
–Ridding him…?
–Doubling down—that’s quite a big call to make, not one you do lightly. By drawing focus to the
dif icult move and juxtaposing it with an easier one, the dealer is basically suggesting that the only
really sensible move is the easier one—to hit. All other possibilities are forgotten. On top of that, the
dealer appealed to the rather vague and ambiguous idea of the “player’s mood.” Caught between the
rock and the hard place of the dif icult decision and the ambiguous instruction, the player ends up
choosing the “only” sensible option, which in fact is nothing of the sort. That’s what the double bind
is.
–So what should the man have done?
–What he should or shouldn’t have done isn’t really the issue. What the man should have been
focusing on—or rather, resigning himself to—was the fact that he had a losing hand. But now he only
has eyes for victory. He’s convinced himself, or allowed himself to be duped into believing, that losing
along the way is a necessary part, a price that he has to pay in order to achieve his ultimate goal. But
it’s not. A losing hand is just a losing hand, nothing more, nothing less.
The monocled man and the fat lady played in the same way: the more cards they drew, the more they
focused on their own hands, paying less and less attention to the dealer’s cards.
“Double down,” called the man, only a couple of hands later. He drew a 9 to his existing hand of
thirteen and went bust.
The dealer’s upcard was a 6—playing by the book, the man should have stayed.
It was the beginning of the end for the monocled man. He might have been crumbling silently up to this
point, but now he started crashing down with a roar. Perhaps he was playing with “scared money”—
money he shouldn’t have been touching, money meant for living expenses or even to pay his hotel bill
during his stay. Either way, he was now on the edge, in sharp contrast to the woman, who seemed to be
enjoying herself in a far healthier manner, even as she frittered away her chips.
The man started doubling down on hands such as fifteen and sixteen, busting left, right, and center. He
bet large amounts on single hands and then seemed largely oblivious even when the dealer had an ace as
his upcard, recklessly doubling down regardless. The dealer started commenting on the man’s choices,
bolstering up his recklessness, and the man clung to these crumbs of comfort.
In true Confucian style, the dealer said, “Doubling down is an extremely aggressive move. Some hands
are suited more for attacking, others for defending.”
The dealer said, “Of all the players I’ve ever met, sir, may I say that an attacking style seems to suit
you the best.”
The dealer said, “Do please take all the time you need to decide whether this is the place to press your
advantage, sir.”
The dealer said, “Regrets at what might have been are the surest way to ruin your game. Do make sure
you play as your heart tells you—that’s the best way to ensure you have no regrets. Going with your gut
instinct is often best.”
The dealer had the monocled man by the snout, well and truly. The lady, too, seemed to be responding
—she was slowly but surely increasing her bets. Oeufcoque, on the other hand, responded to each of the
dealer’s precepts with increasingly disdainful commentary.
Thus:
–Attacking, defending. What does that even mean in the context of this game? Nothing—they’re
completely ambiguous terms. As is the idea of hands “suiting” a particular style of play. All this sort
of talk does is hook the player into going along with the dealer.
Then:
–“Do take all the time you need to decide”—that’s just a bind to force his hand. The only “choice”
left in the man’s mind is to double down.
And:
–A bust is a bust, full stop. You can give it whatever name you like, call it “regrets” or what have
you, but it’s not going to help you one bit. Even if the game does throw him up the odd high-paying
blackjack, that’s not going to change the fact that overall the man is hemorrhaging money.
At each step Oeufcoque was warning Balot, but he was also teaching her the game. And in a far easier
and more effective manner than any sort of long-winded plan concocted at the planning table.
The monocled man and the fat lady were now losing money hand over fist. Both were down well over
thirty thousand dollars.
–What sort of person is this dealer?
–A bit of a prima donna. Good at his job, a real rainmaker. He knows the game inside out and he’s
good with the customers. As far as the casino is concerned, he’s a real golden goose—and he knows it.
–I don’t like him.
–Fine. Just don’t let him know that you don’t like him.
–What do you want me to do?
–When you win, smile. When you lose, sulk.
She did just that for the next few hands, and the card shoe started running low.
The monocled man had switched to lower value bets, a hundred dollars a hand or even less.
–Looks like I win our little game. Oeufcoque’s voice was confident.
They entered the final game of the card shoe—they had hit the red card, signifying time to reshuffle at
the end of the hand.
It was also the end of the road for the monocled man. He had hit on twelve, drawn a 10, gone bust, and
run out of chips. The reason he had switched to lower bets was simply because he had started to run out
of money. Now he had run out.
The shuffle for the next game started, and as it did the man stood up and collected the hat and coat that
he had checked.
“Not a good game for me, was it?” he asked the dealer.
“Some days you need to pay the price in order to make sure your luck flows smoothly on other days,”
the dealer replied, his face serious.
The monocled man nodded. Then he left.
03
The talk at the table during the next shuffle was solely focused around the cause of the monocled man’s
defeat. The Doctor set the ball rolling, and the woman asked the dealer his opinion. The dealer wouldn’t
budge from his stated view that it was a necessary and inevitable price all gamblers had to pay once in a
while, whereas the old man said that it was because he had become too heated, too passionate, so much
so that his luck had deserted him.
–His defeat was inevitable.
Oeufcoque summed it up the best and the most succinctly.
–He got too caught up in his own cards, hitting too much, doubling down on high bets, too
impressed by the idea of getting that magical twenty-one. Bound by these severe handicaps he was no
more than a sitting duck in the dealer’s sights. In particular, he was far too attached to his small
cards.
–Small cards?
–Whatever way you break down the odds, the small cards—cards with a face value of six and below
—are advantageous to the dealer. In this case, our dealer kept on using the word “attack” in order to
delude the man into drawing more and more of them.
The man in question was now nowhere to be seen. He was like the very cards that he had played,
disappearing without a trace moments after a hand was declared bust. But he wasn’t the sort who was
likely to run off and lick his wounds, reflecting on what went wrong and learning a valuable lesson. No.
More likely, he was the sort who’d be back sooner rather than later, like a dog to its own vomit, aiming
for that glorious victory that remained just out of reach even as he plunged headfirst into bankruptcy.
Such was the bittersweet lingering memory of the world of pleasure. Balot found it difficult to feel too
sorry for him, though. The man still had something of a future, and he was always going to wake up
tomorrow feeling fine regardless of what the outcome at the table had been. In stark contrast to Balot, who
needed the win. The thing that concerned her was not the fact that the man had lost. It was the fact that he
had been made to lose.
The spectacular victory that the man had been aiming for had never really existed. All that had
happened was the man had had the sweet scent of victory wafted under his nose, leading him ever farther
down the road to ruin. He’d even been allowed to taste victory, briefly, but temporarily—the dealer had
made sure of that. It was part of the dealer’s act, part of the web of illusion that the casino sold, wrapped
up in such pretty little boxes.
How to cut your way through that tangled web of lies? Without a proper plan, based on logic and a
sound foundation, all was folly. The desire to win—all this gave you was a step up on the stairway that
led to the harsh reality of ignominious defeat. Just like the Mardock, the Stairway to Heaven, that statue
that epitomized all that was ambitious and dangerous about the city.
As Balot was thinking about all this, Oeufcoque’s next words floated up on her hand.
–Looks like I won our first game.
Oeufcoque seemed as casual as ever, which made Balot want to dig her heels in.
–Well, I’m going to win the next one.
–Let’s start it right now, then. The woman or the old man—who’s going to leave the table first?
–The woman, definitely.
–I’ll choose the old man.
–Because I went for the lady?
–No. I was always going to choose the old man. Definitely.
Balot couldn’t help but be surprised. How on earth was the old man, clearly an accomplished player
and with the results to prove it, going to be hounded out before the fat lady who spent money like a
drunken sailor?
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 seemparticularly 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 fromone 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 did have a bank of chips at hand. A bank that guarded the chips carefully, sometimes even
increasing the available number, ever so steadily.
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 fromher.
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.
He had given his permission.
The woman grabbed a pile of chips with her chubby fingers. Where from? The old man’s basket of
chips, of course.
–I see…
Balot snarced Oeufcoque, almost unthinkingly.
–So that’s how she does it. I did wonder how she was able to bet so much without worrying.
–Ah, so you’ve realized what was bankrolling her bankroll?
–Is that whyyou chose the old man to leave the table first?
–Naturally.
–No fair!
She felt Oeufcoque chuckling somewhere at the back of her hand.
Balot had got it all wrong. At first she thought that the old man was being paraded about by the
younger lady, the helpless gent reliant on the woman’s kindness. But that was all an act that he put on for
her sake; in reality, she was the one who was utterly dependent on him.
–Don’t be too hard on yourself, Balot. You worked it out for yourself and pretty quickly too. That’s
impressive—you’re allowed to give yourself a little pat on the back once in a while, you know,
particularly when you deserve it.
In other words, the plump lady didn’t have any chips of her own. Only those that she was allowed to
play with. The dealer knew this all too well—it would have been one of the first things he worked out.
And that’s where he was targeting his manipulative inducements.
“It’s funny—I can feel that I’m about to start winning, but I never quite seem to get there…” the
woman grumbled.
The dealer consoled her with platitudes. “Perhaps we haven’t quite served enough time at the game for
the cards to start taking a liking to us yet, madam?”
“What do you think I need to do in order to start winning more?”
“My best advice is to try out a number of different things for yourself, all the while taking advice from
a player who knows the game well,” replied the dealer.
On the surface the scene seemed straightforward—a case of the dealer gently flattering his two
customers. This was only the tip of the iceberg, though; much more was going on under the surface.
–The dealer is appealing to the old man’s sense of chivalry. He’s being set up as the white knight
in shining armor, with the woman being set up as the damsel in distress.
This was Oeufcoque’s analysis of the scene as it played out.
–The dealer didn’t really have to do much to make things go his way. The old man already felt
chivalrous, and the woman has long suf ered from damsel-in-distress syndrome. There were plenty of
opportunities for the dealer to hand them the poisoned apple.
–But the old man’s been contradicting the dealer!
–That’s all part of the dealer’s plan…
–What do you mean?
–The dealer’s deliberately been feeding him half-mistakes, getting the old man to correct him. In
doing so, the words are coming out of the old man’s mouth. It’s much easier to get him to act
accordingly. After all, if the old man is the one saying the words, he’s hardly going to expect that
they’ve been planted in his mouth. He thinks he’s acting of his own free will, but really he’s at the
dealer’s beck and call.
Balot’s head started to spin. She couldn’t help but be impressed at how meticulously the dealer had
planned the whole situation.
Not only that, to look at him you wouldn’t have the slightest inkling that he was being so manipulative.
Ingenious.
–Now then, back to our little game. Let’s see how it’s progressing.
Oeufcoque was talking about the game where they guessed who would leave the table first, of course,
not the card game.
–I still think it’ll be the woman.
Balot stuck to her guns. The old man might have been passing on some of his chips to the woman, but
he showed no sign of running out anytime soon. And if the old man’s pride was indeed the key to the
dealer’s success in manipulating him, well, wouldn’t that very same pride ensure that he wouldn’t run out
of chips in the near future?
Before long the game was over—the red marker card appeared again, just at a point when the dealer
had bust. There was a pause. Just as Balot thought, the old man still had his large pile of chips intact.
“Hmm, couldn’t quite increase my pile as quickly as I would have liked,” said the old man, apparently
out of nowhere. As he did so he called over one of the attendants to have himfetch his hat and coat. It was
all Balot could do not to show her disbelief on her face.
The old man rose. He did have plenty of chips left, of course. But—incredibly, to Balot—he passed
them all over to the lady. Grinning, the lady took hold of them all. The old man was telling the whole
table, in deed and in word, that he’d had his fill of fun for the day. Then he sauntered over to the bar.
–The inevitable conclusion for a proud player. He knows himself well enough, including his own
limits. Rather than tire himself out, carry on past the point of his concentration, and start losing, he’d
rather quit while he’s ahead. He presents his lady with her bounty, the spoils of his conquest, then
withdraws while the going is still good, his head held high.
Balot was stunned. She hadn’t even considered the old man’s psychology, his inner workings. It was
only now that Oeufcoque pointed all this out that she started to wonder how the old man had come to be
with the lady in the first place—what he offered her and what he sought fromher in return.
–So, how did you enjoy our little game?
–Not much. I didn’t win either time.
–Still, it’s fulfilled its objective.
–Objective?
–You were talking to me, focusing on our little side bet, which meant that your mind was taken of
the dealer’s wiles. I was concerned that he might have left a powerful impression on you otherwise—
one that might have distracted you from our ultimate goal.
Balot had had an inkling all along that this was what Oeufcoque had been doing, but now that he had
confirmed it to her so bluntly she wasn’t really sure what to say to him. As she searched for the words,
Oeufcoque continued in a somewhat mischievous tone.
–You see, when it comes to influencing you, I’ve got a massive advantage over the dealer. He
doesn’t have any way of speaking to you directly, after all.
Balot’s brow wrinkled ever so slightly at Oeufcoque’s tactlessness.
–There’s no need to tease me about it.
–The thing is, now that you know how this sort of manipulation works, you’re going to be on the
lookout for it. It’s going to be much easier for you to resist. Not only that, if you play your cards right
—metaphorically as well as literally—then you’ll be able to turn the tables, work out exactly what the
dealer is trying to do, and use it to manipulate him.
Oeufcoque casually added a throwaway remark:
–Because neither the Doctor nor I would be able to manipulate the dealer in the way that we’ll
need to in order to win big.
This wasn’t a question of impressions or influence or manipulation anymore. Neither was it a matter
of whether what they were doing was right or wrong—it wasn’t a big deal, in the grander scheme of
things. The only really important question now was this: was Balot up to the task?
–I want to believe you, Oeufcoque. Both you and the Doctor. Is that a bad thing? Am I being
manipulated?
–That’s a judgment call for you to make, after you’ve honed your own decision-making faculties.
All I can say is that this is the path that you’ve chosen in order to try and solve your case.
–But I don’t think I can win on my own!
–You won’t have to. One of our chief tasks is to be here to support you. And it’s your free will, your
choice, that determines exactly how, and if, you want to use us. Whether you want to use the plan that
we suggest.
–Are you trying to influence me right now? Manipulate me into acting the wayyou want me to?
–Yes, I am. I want you to use me. To let me prove my usefulness.
Oeufcoque answered without a moment’s hesitation. He continued, –I’m a Living Unit. A tool.
Balot’s eyes narrowed.
–My pride is not that dif erent from the sort of pride that old man had. I can define my own sense of
self-worth—my usefulness—only in terms of how my actions af ect other people. I may have my own
values, but I need to constantly put them to the test, to see if they have any value in relation to other
people, the real world.
–But I do want to use you. Because…because you make me feel like I could do things for myself,
even without you.
As far as Balot was concerned, this was the ultimate usefulness that Oeufcoque could provide for her.
Oeufcoque never tried to dominate people in body or in mind. He always did his utmost to treat them as
equals.
–I want to use you properly. I never want to betrayyou again.
–Thanks, Balot.
Oeufcoque’s words rose once more in her hand.
–Looks like I’ve ended up with a good partner.
04
The dealer finished shuffling and the Doctor placed the red marker into the cards.
–I’m going to display a running point tally.
Oeufcoque’s instructions couldn’t have been more decisive.
–We’re ramping the plan up to the next stage. We need to let the Doctor know.
Balot placed her chips down and casually tapped the table with her fingertips.
The Doctor picked up on this immediately. As would anyone steeped in his current adopted persona of
the aging playboy.
“Can’t wait for the next set of cards, eh?”
–Yes, Uncle. It’s starting to get reallyinteresting. I’m going to trysuper hard from now on.
The Doctor’s expression was that of a man thoroughly intoxicated by his surroundings. You had to
look very closely indeed to notice that his eyes were still steely and clear.
“That’s quite a statement, young lady! Your uncle’s most proud of you.”
The Doctor’s act was as convincing as ever—the indulgent uncle watching benevolently over his
promising young charge.
Everyone could now see that Balot was concentrating terribly hard on the game. As if she were trying
her damnedest to win. Nothing unusual about that, of course. Most people who sat down at this table felt
the same way. The only difference was that most people weren’t working toward a plan that would help
them win with absolute certainty. Even Balot didn’t understand the full implications of what it meant to
have such a plan in place.
The players had all placed their chips on the table, and just as the hand was about to commence, a
whole new set of figures floated up on Balot’s hand.
–Do you know how to read this point system?
Balot sensed that her whole left hand was now wrapped in a list of numbers. The current point tally
and the breakdown of the cards. Each point total had a corresponding minimumand maximumbet.
–No problem. I can work it out.
Balot absorbed the data in the table deftly. Basically, the higher the point tally the more chips you bet
on a particular hand, and the lower the points the less you bet. A rudimentary card-counting system called
the ace-five count.
The principles were that the ace was the most advantageous card for the player, and the 5 was the best
card for the house. The other cards were also ranked, in varying degrees, according to how advantageous
they were for either the player or the house. So, whenever an ace was drawn, you subtracted two points,
and whenever a 5 was drawn you added two points. Any card between 2 and 6 (other than 5) gave you
one point. The 7, 8, and 9 were neutral. Any card worth ten meant you subtracted a point. And so you
came up with an overall point tally. Every time the tally moved past a certain milestone, you changed the
amount you bet on a single hand. Ten points and above, between five and ten points, fewer than five,
between zero and minus five, lower than minus five; each point tally was allocated a different betting
increment.
This rudimentary card-counting system was entirely compatible with the playing system they already
had in place; the bankroll management systemon Balot’s right hand would now also serve to keep track of
their profits and losses according to the new card-counting system. Whereas previously they had been
more or less reliant on luck in order to win, now they were going to be able to take the game to the casino.
Balot placed three hundred dollars on the table.
Right at that moment, taking into consideration all the cards that were on the table, the point tally was
plus two.
The cards in front of Balot were 8 and 6, bringing her total to fourteen.
The dealer’s upcard was 9. The correct tactic, according to the grid, was to hit.
The lady had sixteen but fought on, resolute, with a hit. She drew a 2, bringing her total to eighteen.
The point tally on Balot’s hand shifted as an extra point was added—the total was now plus three.
The Doctor drew a 4 on thirteen, taking his total to seventeen. The point tally changed to plus four.
Balot hit, drew a 6, and was now at twenty. Stay, obviously. Point tally: plus five.
The dealer flipped over his hidden card. A 9. The point tally remained unchanged.
The dealer’s total was eighteen—Balot and the lady were the winners this hand.
The cards on the table were moved to the discard pile, and Balot picked up her chips. Now the point
tally became meaningful. Plus five. In accordance with the new tally, Balot increased her bet from three
hundred to six hundred dollars.
Balot’s cards were 6 and 7, total thirteen. The lady and the
Doctor both had small cards, 6 or less. The dealer’s upcard was 6.
The woman and the Doctor both drew steadily until they bust. Balot played in accordance with the
tactical grid on her hand and stayed. The dealer revealed a 2, then drew another card in accordance with
the rules, a 4. He drew again, a 5 this time, bringing his total to seventeen.
Balot had lost. The player had been at the disadvantage in this hand due to the run of small cards. At
this point, Balot had to grin and bear it, in hope of a better future. For the point tally had now increased to
plus eight. Patience was, in this instance, a virtue that was going to reap its reward before too long.
Balot put forward another six hundred dollars’ worth of chips as her stake for her next hand, just as the
point tally demanded. She was waiting for her opportunity. Suddenly she realized that the dealer was
looking at her. Without a moment’s hesitation, the Doctor chimed in with his two cents’ worth.
“That’s right, good, good. Where’s the fun in betting in drips and drabs all the time?”
Balot raised her head a little and leaned to one side.
–You were the one who said that this was a game of endurance, Uncle…
“Sure, sure. But there’s no point in enduring needlessly, just for the sake of it. You’ll just end up fit to
burst with all the stress that builds up. No need to hold back here—let it all out!”
The Doctor’s cover story had its desired effect of drawing some of the dealer’s attention away from
Balot.
The Doctor had sixteen, and hit. The card was a 3. Stay.
It occurred to Balot for the first time that the Doctor wasn’t doing too badly, considering that he didn’t
have Oeufcoque to help himout, and he had managed to hold on to his chips and more.
His bankroll, tactics, and chip stats must have been firmly there, inside his head, the Doctor computing
furiously behind his facade.
Balot hit on her sixteen, just like the Doctor, but she drew an 8 and bust.
Her six hundred dollar stake disappeared along with the cards.
That seemed to do the trick—the dealer appeared to take his eyes off Balot.
He wouldn’t have imagined in a million years that she was actually card counting. But as soon as
anyone showed the slightest signs of playing like they might be doing so, the dealer was programmed to
hone in on them, just in case. Proof that he was, indeed, a first-class dealer.
The point tally hovered around the plus five mark for some time. At one point it reached plus nine, but
a number of minus cards followed in quick succession. Balot started to feel a little worried—what if the
cards continued in this way, never showing a decisive opening? But all she could do was sit there and
play the hands that she was dealt.
Then, just as they started getting into the game, something happened. The woman won big—well, it
had been bound to happen sometime, probably—and drew a blackjack on a stake well in excess of a
thousand dollars. The dealer congratulated her—conspicuously—and at the same time consoled the
Doctor, who had bust, the dealer suggesting that he was so close.
“That’s the way the game goes, I’m afraid, sir. Whenever someone wins big, there’s always going to
be someone next to them who loses. On the other hand, the opposite is also true, so that’s something you
have to look forward to.”
In response, the Doctor turned away from the lady and toward Balot. “It’s not as if we’re going to
keep on losing forever. If we need to pay our dues before Lady Luck finally decides to smile on us then so
be it—let’s not begrudge her.”
So saying, the Doctor bet on the next hand. Big.
Balot snarced Oeufcoque.
–Did the Doctor do all that deliberately?
–Of course. He waited until the dealer honed in on his target and pounced. He’s playing the dealer
in return, turning the dealer’s tricks back on him. This idea that when one player loses, the other
inevitably wins. What the dealer is trying to do is to get the Doctor to bet big once the woman starts
losing. The woman is caught in the dealer’s snare right now, and the dealer is going to move straight
on to the Doctor once the woman’s sucked dry. He’s leaving you till last.
Leaving her till last. The very thought brought up nauseating memories for Balot. The idea that she
was dessert, something to be savored at the end of everything. She remembered how one of her customers
back in the old days told her that her name made her sound delicious…
Something inside Balot stirred. Something ruthless. So, you want to leave me to enjoy at the end, do
you? Well, I’ll be waiting for you, smiling sweetly. I’ll be a juicy, ripe apple, ever so inviting, right up
until the moment you bite into me and discover the razor blade waiting for you inside…
These thoughts spun around in Balot’s head as she assiduously tracked the ebb and flow of the point
tally. A casual onlooker wouldn’t have been able to spot any rhyme or reason in the fluctuations of
Balot’s betting patterns, and neither could the lady, who commented, “What a fickle little thing you are,
my dear, flitting fromone thing to another. I remember a time when I myself was like that, once…”
Whether it was because she had just won a big payout, or whether it was her natural high spirits, the
lady seemed in exceedingly good humor. Balot nodded meekly, as if to acknowledge that she was indeed
feeling adventurous, wanting to try out all sorts of different things. The lady nodded back—good for you.
Her large hands grabbed an even larger handful of chips, and she poured themout onto the table.
“I wonder if luck is flowing my way yet? I can feel something big about to burst…” The lady’s chips
might as well have been large hunks of bloody meat that she was throwing to the piranhas that were the
cards.
Far fromsatisfying their hunger, though, all she was doing was whetting their appetite.
She was right about one thing, though—something big was coming. Balot felt it too. Something from
beyond the point tally. Balot tried to pin down this indefinable something of a feeling.
It wasn’t a feeling exactly like the one she had when firing a gun, nor was it like what she felt when
she was in hot pursuit of the roulette ball. It was familiar and strange all at the same time, as if there were
some sort of pattern, something she was intimately familiar with, except that the stages were all mixed
up. She couldn’t quite work out what it was she was trying find; it seemed to ebb and flow, appear and
disappear. How to nail it? She thought deep and hard.
By the time they had entered the middle stages of the game, the point tally had increased substantially.
Fromplus five to plus eight, then plus eight to plus eleven.
Got it! It was the moment the point tally had moved fromplus eleven to plus thirteen.
For the first time since the game had started, Balot acted as if she were emulating the lady, piling up
her chips in a huge, haphazard stack and shoving themonto the board all at once.
The lady noticed and looked at her. So did the dealer. Balot was riding the crest of the wave. The
small cards had drawn the wave out, and now the surfing conditions were ideal for the player.
The cards were dealt. Balot received a 9—and another 9. Her attention immediately turned to the
upcard: 7. It was a close call, but she had to go for it.
The lady hit on fifteen and bust. The Doctor had thirteen and also hit, and also bust.
Balot touched the cards with her hands for the first time since she sat had down at the table.
–Split, please.
She used her index fingers on either hand to draw the two cards apart, left and right. Then she placed
another pile of chips, equal to her original pile, next to one of the cards. She wasn’t so much concerned
about what individual cards would come next as what the pattern was.
The dealer drew her new cards. A jack for the card on her right.
–Stay.
Then, in perfect timing with her breathing, an ace for her left hand. Now she had a total of nineteen for
her right hand, twenty for her left. Everyone at the table now expected Balot to win.
–Stay.
Balot watched carefully as the dealer turned his hidden card over. She felt the wave ebbing and
flowing. Her head grew hazy, her muscles rigid.
The dealer revealed an 8. Total fifteen. This too was part of the overall pattern—and, as the dealer
was now obliged to draw another card, the wave wasn’t over yet.
Balot closed her eyes. What’s the most important thing now? she thought.
She wondered whether she should ask Oeufcoque for advice, but that thought was abruptly checked.
The answer had been revealed to her as she opened her eyes.
The dealer had drawn a 6. Total twenty-one—Balot’s hands had both snatched defeat from the jaws of
victory. Her chips disappeared, her cards disappeared. But Balot wasn’t even watching anymore. It
wasn’t as if she had anything to learn from this hand. Yet all had become clear. That was all that
mattered. She felt the pattern coming together in intricate detail. It was as if the individual hands were
miniatures, microcosms for the game as a whole.
And it wasn’t possible to ignore the miniatures, to skip over the hands as if they somehow obliterated
the hands that came before them. They were all interconnected.
The losses—and the winnings—would always remain, after all…
The dealer said something to Balot. Consoling her, perhaps. Then he carried on dealing the cards. No
more inducements necessary here, his manner said. My work on this one is well and truly done.
The point tally moved fromplus six to plus ten, up to plus fourteen, then back down to plus twelve.
Then Balot felt it again. Like a shadow in the distance, she could just sense its contours taking shape.
Balot checked what the maximum amount was she was allowed to bet, according to Oeufcoque’s
bankroll management system. Then she bet the maximum amount. The basic unit was three hundred
dollars, so the upper limit was ten times that, three thousand dollars. She piled a number of chips together
so that she held this total in her hand, then laid it on the table.
The lady flinched visibly. The dealer, by contrast, showed no outward sign of interest—as was only
appropriate for a dealer of his rank and training.
The Doctor whistled appreciatively, and Balot awaited her next hand from behind her three thousand
dollar fortress.
The lady and the Doctor were each dealt a 10. The point tally moved fromplus twelve to plus ten.
Balot was dealt a 5. This added two points to the tally, bringing it back up to plus twelve.
The point tally continued to rise as she waited for her second card.
Balot’s second card was finally dealt: another 5.
The point tally stood at plus seventeen, and the dealer’s upcard was a 2.
The lady hit, drew an 8, bust.
The Doctor hit. He had a sixteen, drew a 2, and chose to stay.
The point tally was now plus nineteen—the highest it had been since Balot had started counting the
cards. Balot’s cards were 5 and 5, a total of ten.
The dealer turned to Balot. Balot called.
–Double down.
The dealer’s eyes narrowed. The lady was stunned. Balot was in fact playing by the book—it was the
only sensible move, given her hand and that of the dealer’s. Still, the amount at stake was far above her
previous hands… Balot struggled for a moment and had to force herself to physically pile the chips up.
The dealer stared at the pile now on the table in front of Balot—six thousand dollars’ worth of chips.
Staked it out, like a hunter his quarry. Mouth watering at the prospect of the sweet, sweet flesh that was
being served up to him on a plate. His hand slid over to the card shoe. No sign of foul play—he didn’t
appear to be dishing out a pre-prepared dud card fromthe bottomof the deck.
The card came. For the first time since the game began, Balot actually noticed the suit of the card. It
was the queen of clubs. It took her total up to twenty. This was the razor blade hidden inside the sweet
flesh of the fruit…
–Stay.
Without further ado the dealer flipped his own card over. Ace of clubs. With his existing 2, the
dealer’s total was now thirteen.
He hit again, as prescribed by the rules. It was a 10. The ace in his hand would now be counted as a
soft card, its value falling fromeleven to one in order to prevent the dealer fromgoing bust. His total now
changed to a soft thirteen.
The dealer’s fourth card would prove decisive.
The one-eyed jack. Balot sighed a deep sigh of relief, looking at the profile of the face on the card—
the black jack, who pushed the dealer over the edge and caused himto bust.
Balot had gone with the flow. It was the only choice she could have made, really. And yet all it would
have taken was for the cards to have shifted slightly, one way or another, and she would have been
beaten.
As it was, she’d won.
“Wow! What a hand! Is my little niece secretly a magician or something?” The Doctor made a great
fuss over Balot’s victory—the perfect smokescreen.
Balot lifted her head toward him.
–I just thought that my luck was about to turn, Uncle. Just like the nice lady over there said. I
was a little scared, though!
Balot did everything she could to imitate the mannerisms of the lady, and indeed this served perfectly
to throw the dealer off the scent. After all, hadn’t he just influenced the lady to play recklessly? The lady
was even more impressed when the dealer pushed over the two piles of six thousand dollars toward
Balot: the original stake and the winnings. The lady was caught up in the moment completely now and
practically threw her next lot of chips at the table. She was betting in increments of a thousand dollars at a
time. And if she truly thought that her moment had come, that victory was just around the corner—well,
who knew how much she would start betting? One thing was for sure, though: the dealer was on his way
to find out. He had her wrapped around his little finger and insinuated himself further and further into her
mind, consoling her when she lost, praising her on the increasingly rare occasions that she won, all the
while dishing out his advice.
The dealer said, “Lady Luck seems to be playing a fickle game tonight, madam. I have a feeling that
the person who invests the most in their cards is likely to come out on top in the end.”
The dealer said, “Everyone wants to be in a good position to take advantage of their lucky streak when
it comes. Be sure not to let yours slip fromyour fingers.”
The dealer said, “Victory is such a subjective concept. Everyone should set their own definition of
‘victory,’ and aimalways for that.”
The lady, in turn, would throw back questions at the dealer, only to have them answered in the
dealer’s smooth, inimitable way.
“Do you think I’mplaying in a way that’s keeping my lucky streak at bay?”
“It’s difficult to say, madam, as only you know for sure exactly how far away you are from being able
to ride your own lucky streak. It’s like being with a lover—only you can know how close you really are
to them.”
“Ah, yes. Like when you only realize your true feelings for them after you’ve left them and the moment
has passed.”
“Exactly, madam. And, forgive me for saying so, but it seems that as a woman of the world, you’re
experienced enough to know your own feelings.”
Even as the dealer was replying, the lady had another fistful of chips in her chubby hands, ready to
continue.
–He’s not bad.
Oeufcoque’s tone of voice was that of a professional athlete praising the winner at a junior sports day.
–He’s got natural talent, I’ll give him that. He smells as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world
that he’s able to manipulate people.
–You mean through the double bind and preying on people’s breathing patterns?
–Yes, that, but other techniques too. He knows what he’s doing, all right.
–Other techniques?
–His choice of words. “Tonight,” “in the end,” that sort of thing. It’s distracting her completely
from her bankroll. Classic misdirection. What it comes down to, though, is that he’s using any means
possible to get her to bet more and more of her chips. His metaphor of a lover was a good one. She
swallowed it hook, line, and sinker—the idea that the only way she’ll get the chips back is if she puts
out…
–Yes, I can believe that about her…
–It could even be that she’s experienced just the reverse of that in real life and is now
subconsciously trying to put something right the second time around. The dealer is proving an
af irmation of that, making her relax her grip on her chips. A simple type of manipulation, but ef ective
nonetheless.
–So you’re saying that the dealer is good with words, and that’s why he’s winning?
–Words, yes, but that’s only one part of the picture. What he’s doing is selling a dream, a fantasy.
He’s taking what’s in their minds and encouraging them to try and turn it into reality.
Before too long the lady did manage to win big on a hand. For a moment, her fantasy had been
fulfilled. She won $7,500, but more importantly she was now in a trance, almost an ecstatic state. As if
the lover that she had reluctantly parted company with when he hadn’t two cents to rub together had now
returned to her as a multi-millionaire and conquering hero.
As the game entered its final stages, the old man who had been playing until recently returned to stand
behind the lady and watch her play.
It was almost as if the old man had placed the lady there so that she could lose. His pride was an
immovable boulder on this point; when he wasn’t there to support her, she was helpless. This was how it
was, and how it should be.
Jack Sprat could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean—and so betwixt the two of them they licked
the platter clean.
This was the sort of couple they were.
The red marker appeared and the round came to a close. The woman staggered to her feet. Her face
looked thoroughly satiated.
She was spent.
“A good evening to you all,” she bid them.
The Doctor replied in kind, “Good evening, madam. I guess we two will have to be the last ones here,
with only the cards to keep us company.”
The lady smiled, still in high spirits. “I’m afraid I’m through for the night. Though I’m sure the cards
will keep calling me back—I do love themso.”
Cards probably weren’t the only things that she loved, of course.
Balot politely bid the lady good night and turned her attention to the tables on her left hand.
The lady had lost well in excess of a hundred thousand dollars. As she had been destined to do from
the start.
Balot wiped the lady’s data from her hand in order to make way for information that would be more
useful at this stage.
“Well, well. It looks like it’s just us now. But we’re still good to enjoy a game with you, right,
Marlowe?” The Doctor spoke to the dealer as if he were an old friend, not someone he had just met for
the first time a short while ago.
“Of course, sir. I wouldn’t have it any other way.” The dealer was as friendly as ever with his banter,
but as he shuffled in preparation for the next round, he glanced at his wristwatch. How long would he
need to serve these two up on a plate? Then he turned back to look at Balot and the Doctor. Oeufcoque
would have picked up instantly on the look of deep greed—desire, even—that twinkled at the back of the
dealer’s eyes. Balot noticed it too.
Balot focused on sensing what the dealer was trying to do with the shuffle. His fingers were moving
smoothly, deliberately, creating intricate patterns. Patterns that represented the dealer’s will, as he
manipulated the rules, stacking the odds in his favor. This must have been the intangible sense of unease
that Balot had felt ever since sitting down at the table.
–I can feel it, Oeufcoque.
–Feel what?
–This dealer isn’t just shuffling the cards.
–You mean he’s manipulating their order?
–He’s changing the way he shuffles them according to which customer he’s targeting.
–I doubt that even he could memorize the entire contents of the card shoe, though.
–Maybe not. But he is at least thinking about the patterns of play, I’m sure of it.
–You think you know what the dealer’s plan is?
–Prettysure.
–Really?
Oeufcoque’s reply came from within the glove. He seemed impressed—amazed, even. Balot nodded
in confirmation, then realized that she had done so in reality, not just in her heart. Hurriedly she made a
shaking movement with her head to cover it up, and it seemed that she succeeded. She continued her
conversation with Oeufcoque, more carefully this time.
–Not in terms of exact facts and figures like you, of course. Just in a general sense.
–Enough to put it to use to your advantage?
–I just tried it out back then. I was right half the time. With a bit more practice, I think I’ll get
even better.
–Right, then. I’ll do what I can with the numbers and the dealer’s odor. You use your senses. We’ll
use our combined skills to ramp things up and move on to the next stage. Are you ready?
For a moment Balot thought she could hear Oeufcoque’s growly laughter.
Laughter that suggested a hint of mischief—but laughter that she could rely on.
Balot nodded. Firmly inside her heart, this time.
The dealer had finished shuffling and had stacked the mountain of cards into a neat pile. He turned to
Balot. For a second she had no idea what he wanted, and then it dawned on her: the red marker was held
toward her, neatly, for her to take.
For the second time since taking her seat at the table, Balot received the transparent red card for her to
place in the deck as she pleased.
She focused her attention on the pile of cards and felt a certain something that seemed to emanate from
one point. She slipped the marker right in at that exact place.
The dealer cut the cards one last time, smoothly as ever, then placed the cards in the card shoe. Balot
felt the movement ever so keenly; it was as if she had set off a little ripple that could now spread out
across the whole pattern, and more importantly, the dealer responded to that ripple—to its influence—
when he cut the cards.
–We’re taking our system through to the end, it looks like. Best tell the Doctor that we’re moving
into the final stage.
Balot squeezed back at the words as they emerged in her hand. Af irmative.
–Uncle, I have a feeling that I’m going to win big this time. My lucky streak is about to arrive,
I’m sure of it.
“Dear, dear, and the game’s hardly even begun…” The Doctor wrung his hands, skillful as ever in his
portrayal of the part of the indulgent uncle who was now gently exasperated at his young charge’s
impatience. He looked like he was surrendering.
His eyes, though, told a different story as he caught Balot’s own eyes for an instant. Then they went
back behind the smokescreen.
“Well, then, we’ll have to get serious! Let’s see who can win the most—you or me!”
That was the cue for themboth to bring their chips to the table.
The dealer smiled and checked their chips before dealing out the cards with the utmost care.
The game had begun. The game that Balot was going to win.
05
–I’m now going to display the true count.
The display on Balot’s left hand transfigured again. Another level of detail had been added. More
numbers, the fluctuations in the count. In terms of the quantity of displays, there was now actually slightly
less to take in—the other players’ data was no longer there—but the numbers that remained were now of
another order of complexity, far beyond the computational power of the average person.
The point tally was no longer a simplistic one or two points at a time, either.
A 9 was now minus one, a 10 worth minus three and an ace minus four. The other numbers, too, were
assigned values between plus and minus four. The resulting tally would then be used as a coefficient to
other factors, namely the number of cards already played compared to the number left. The result of these
calculations would in turn produce the ultimate optimized betting strategy.
In particular, the most important new development was that they were now keeping track of every
single card that was played in the course of a round.
This was the one and only way to achieve their aim: absolute victory.
They would memorize all the cards that had appeared so that they could work out with mathematical
certainty their odds of winning. Hence the true count.
There were six decks of cards in play in total, or 312 cards. Of those, thirty-odd would be excluded
from a round because they would come below the red marker. The remaining 280 or so could be
memorized, though, and if done properly the true count would be able to pinpoint the precise moment
when the odds were most in Balot’s favor—the moment to strike.
This was what Balot and the Doctor had been waiting for all along, and it was the reason they had
been playing the waiting game.
–Sooner or later the moment will definitely come. The right moment to bet everything on a single
hand. Until then you need to preserve your bankroll at all costs.
Balot squeezed her hand again—roger that.
She turned to the Doctor.
–Come on, Uncle! Your turn!
“Sure, sure…”
–No fair! Just because the other players have gone doesn’t mean you can dawdle around and
hold up the game, you know!
She knocked the Doctor’s arm as if to hurry him along. Really, though, she was thinking that they’d
managed that well. In order to win through card counting they needed to get through the earlier hands as
quickly as possible in order to get to the good stuff. The Doctor’s dallying was the perfect smokescreen—
no one who was deliberately taking their time was likely to be a card counter.
The Doctor raised his head and hit. He drew a 3 on fifteen, total eighteen.
The Doctor called stay, and exhaled deeply, as if he’d struggled to make the decision.
Balot hit on sixteen. The dealer flipped her card over: 8.
The dealer’s upcard was a 9. It wasn’t the wrong decision for Balot to have hit—her move was
tactically sound. It just didn’t help her very much; the result was that she bust, plain and simple. The cards
and chips were collected, and Balot was about to take her eyes off them when Oeufcoque gave her an
unusual instruction.
–Keep your eyes glued to your losing hand.
Balot did so, staring at the discard pile where her cards now rested.
The dealer turned his hidden card over: 9 and 8, which made seventeen—the Doctor won the hand.
–Try and make out that you’re somehow winning.
–Even though I’m obviously not?
–Yes. As if you can’t bear losing, so you’re changing the rules in your own mind so that you’re
somehow winning.
Not the easiest request in the world, and Balot had to give some thought as to how she was going to do
this. But then the Doctor fed her a lifeline, almost as if he had read her mind.
“There you are, you see? Less haste, more speed. Sometimes you do need to think about it in order to
pull off a good win!”
–Whatever. Myscore was higher than yours, anyway.
“What are you talking about?”
–I had twenty-four. You only had eighteen, Uncle.
Balot had no idea how she’d come up with this or where she was going with it. Judging by their
reactions, neither did the dealer, or indeed the Doctor.
“Erm…you do understand the rules, don’t you, my dear? That’s not quite how the game is played.”
The Doctor peered over at her, somewhat nonplussed.
–It’s mymoney, I can play how I like!
Balot tried to sound as plausibly petulant as she could. The Doctor looked over at her indulgently,
turning to the dealer as he dealt the cards. I’ll humor the child, he seemed to say.
The dealer continued to deal, his expression as serious as ever.
Suddenly Balot felt somewhat embarrassed. Instinctively she turned to Oeufcoque to see if she had
done something wrong.
–Was there a point to that?
–Of course.
–What, then?
–To manipulate the dealer.
–How?
–We show him just what a mysterious creature woman is.
That didn’t really satisfy Balot—she still wanted to know how—but then it was her turn.
Balot hit on thirteen and bust. The card that should have helped her as a player was now sticking its
oar in, getting in her way. Don’t rely on the cards to help you out, even the good ones. The key to
playing a steady game was never to hope for too much. Unless you expected fully to lose at any moment
and could cultivate that sense of detachment, you were doomed to be led around by the nose. She had been
taught this by the Doctor prematch, and she ruminated deeply on its meaning. Suddenly it came to her: was
this what Oeufcoque wanted?
–I’m supposed to try and confuse him? The dealer?
–Exactly. I’ll tell you when and how. Be as innocent as you can. Oeufcoque spoke as if he were
casually ordering her to shoot himwith a gun that she held in her hand.
Balot realized the enormity of what Oeufcoque was asking of her.
The cards came. A queen and 6, making sixteen. The dealer’s upcard was a 10. The odds of winning at
this point were severely stacked against her. The chips that she had placed—the chips she should have
placed—were added to the tables on her hands, chalked up as additional losses. This was costing her
dearly. But was she gaining something valuable in return?
Certainly Oeufcoque seemed to think so—he seemed totally unconcerned by what was actually on the
cards. Indeed, he actually asked Balot:
–What sort of cards did you get?
Oeufcoque should have known this for himself, of course, but Balot snarced the full images of the
cards directly to Oeufcoque, giving himan accurate facsimile of what she saw.
–I was actually asking for your impression of the cards, your gut reaction. Like what you wrote
about the fossils in your personal dictionary.
Balot’s mind went back to the time they were in the café together, way back before the trial.
–The pictures are pretty. I like the black queen. The six of diamonds seems like an accessoryfor
her to wear.
–I want you to tell the Doctor what you’ve just told me.
–Is that all? Anything else?
–If you can think of anything else good to say then go for it, sure.
The Doctor hit, and though it was a close call he was still in the game. It was Balot’s turn.
Balot nudged the Doctor.
–Hey, Uncle? Don’t you think the picture on this card here is reallycute?
The Doctor leaned over to inspect the queen in detail, almost as if Balot had drawn the picture on it
herself. “I see what you’re talking about. Just your sort of thing, isn’t it?”
–It goes really well with the other card. I’m not sure I want to change it.
“I see. I think you’re right.”
–I thought so.
Then Oeufcoque cued her at exactly the right moment.
–Still—
–Still—I’d like to hit.
The dealer was completely unprepared for this. He hadn’t spent years training for nothing, though, and
he was ready with the next card, smooth as ever.
It was a 5. Her total was twenty-one. Was this the something valuable she was getting in return for her
patience? The small card that was normally so advantageous to the house had now saved the player.
This was the pattern she had read—it was all coming together. But before she had time to react,
Oeufcoque gave Balot her next instructions.
–Look at the pictures and show that you’re unsatisfied with the card you’ve just been given. As if
the drawings on the cards are all that matter.
Balot scowled conspicuously and pointed toward the new card as if it were an unwelcome interloper.
–What a shame! I didn’t think this would happen, Uncle. The pictures are all out of whack—
they don’t match at all!
“Do you know what? I think you’re right about what you said earlier about not changing the pattern.
You really do show talent as a budding artist.”
–I like to think so, Uncle.
The two of them prattled on, a truly inane conversation. Pointless. But the dealer tried to find what
meaning he could in it. He looked fromone face to another, trying to break down the illusion.
Balot popped her head up.
–Stay.
Obviously. She hardly needed to say it, yet the dealer reacted as if he was momentarily surprised by
Balot’s decision. He nodded and flipped over his own card. A face card, value ten. His total was twenty.
Balot had won.
The dealer paid out Balot’s winnings, but she left them to one side, apparently uninterested—
disappointed, even—in her victory. In fact she had won twice over: once because of the hand and again
because she had successfully thrown the dealer off balance. But she kept this all to herself.
From this point onward Balot said whatever came to her mind as the cards were dealt, anything to put
the dealer off the scent—and draw himfurther in at the same time.
Balot said,
–The cards are like a flock of birds in flight. I want to help them fly awayto freedom.
Balot said,
–The cards seem a little jagged at the corners. I hope I’ll be able to smooth out their rough edges
a bit.
Balot said,
–Theyseem a little soft—but maybe they’re exactlyright just as they are.
And then, –Still, I’m going to hit. And then, –Because of that, I should stay, I think. And then, –
Even so, I’d like to hit, please.
Balot could hardly work out whether she was coming or going herself. Let alone the dealer.
The Doctor supported her act as best he could, occasionally turning to the dealer with a face that said
I’ve no idea what she’s going on about either, but let’s humor her.
–The dealer’s doing a pretty good job of keeping his cool so far, but even he won’t be able to keep
it up much longer.
Oeufcoque seemed mildly amused by his own mischief. He brought up the true count on Balot’s hand,
thoroughly and accurately.
–He thinks he has you worked out—what sort of personality you are. He has you down as a proper
little spoiled princess, someone who doesn’t even have to ask before she gets. So he’s working out how
to give it to you—his head’s full of just how he’s going to do that.
Balot shrugged her shoulders. She started to appreciate just how powerful a force misdirection was.
Basically, this dealer was exceedingly proud of the fact that he could read any customer like a book—
or so he thought.
In other words, the dealer knew that however irrationally the customer seemed to be acting, there was
always a reason behind their behavior, whether it was conscious or subconscious.
Despite his brave face, though, all the dealer had to go on at this point was the fact that Balot had
suddenly gone from being more or less mute to a real chatterbox. Balot could feel his breathing rhythms
start to sway, and even if Oeufcoque hadn’t been there to guide her she would have been able to work out
exactly when to interject, to prod him, for maximum effect, throwing him further and further off his guard
without his even realizing it.
–Looks like clubs are myluckysuit. They’re always there for me when I need them the most.
The Doctor nodded in agreement, showing he was in full sympathy with his “niece’s” line of thinking.
“Oh, yes, it’s most important to discover your special suit. It’s a well-known fact that a particular suit can
act as a mirror for your soul.”
At this point Balot had no clubs in her hand. Only the dealer’s upcard was a club.
Balot was presumably going to sit tight and wait, hoping for the dealer to bust. But no. The second
after the Doctor said he would stay,
–Hit.
Balot didn’t even leave a hair’s breadth before calling out her move. The dealer’s reaction was
delayed again. As if he were doing everything he could to force himself not to ask her to repeat herself
because he hadn’t caught it the first time.
The card came. A 6 on top of her thirteen. The suit was diamonds.
The dealer was staring intently at Balot, trying to work out what was going through her mind.
–Just as I thought, Uncle!
That was all she had to say.
The Doctor didn’t even seem to be paying attention to Balot’s cards at this point; he was, by all
appearances, focused intently on his own game. As a result of this further misdirection, the dealer had
even less to go on.
Now Balot would take plenty of time to mull over her next hand before choosing to stay, and the
dealer would flip over his hidden card with relief, as if he had finally been permitted his turn. Both his
hidden card and his upcard were face cards, and the dealer won that hand. Furthermore, both his cards
were clubs.
“So close, madamoiselle, my commiserations.”
–Oh, not to worry. My suit just took a little wander over your way, that’s all. They’ll be back in
my hand before long, and in greater numbers too.
Sure enough, that was exactly what happened in the next hand. Not that Balot had any way of planning
it exactly like that, of course, but when the 2 of clubs appeared in her hand along with the ace of spades,
Balot smiled as if to show her theory had been proven right. The dealer nodded in surprise but then
seemed to accept her theory that clubs were just “her” suit, and appeared to relax a little. Balot decided to
throw himoff the scent further. She didn’t even have to wait for an instruction fromOeufcoque.
–Then again, looking at this hand it seems that it’s spades that are coming to myrescue.
Balot said this out loud, deliberately, as the Doctor hesitated over his choice. Then, when it was her
turn,
–Sorryto mess you around, clubs, but I think I’m going to have to hit after all.
She drew a face card—clubs.
–As I thought—you did come to myrescue, after all.
She hit again, still speaking apparently to herself. This time she received a 5. Hearts.
–Ah, finally! Thanks for dropping by.
Still prattling inanely to herself, she chose to stay.
–I’ve always bet on hearts, all along, but I think that this heart is particularly worth betting on.
“Well, there’s a stroke of luck for you,” said the Doctor, ever the Doctor, as he stared intently at the
dealer’s upcard.
The dealer had a 5 and 7. He drew a picture card and bust.
“You know, you’re exceptionally gifted at predicting the cards. Your uncle never would have guessed
that one, you know,” continued the Doctor.
–Yeah. The spade seemed to want to stick his oar in, but the heart went well with the club, so I
thought it was worth betting on them to see if it would work out.
“Hmm, I see. You’re having a conversation with the cards, you could say? Talking to them?”
The dealer handed over her winnings with an expression that seemed to suggest that he’d rather Balot
kept her conversation for people and let the cards sort themselves out.
The game progressed along similar lines for another few hands, and then Balot had a jack and 10
appear in front of her.
Balot now put on a triumphant air, pointing at her cards.
–I was waiting for these! See! I knew myclubs would come crawling back to me before too long.
A little too late, though, don’t you think, Uncle? I don’t really need them anymore.
The Doctor just nodded, somewhat carelessly.
Balot was the only one to win that hand.
She received her winnings but pushed them over to one side, apparently uninterested by the chips—
bored by them, almost.
She could almost hear the dealer’s state of confusion cranking up a notch.
At this point the dealer should really have given up on trying to read Balot, taken stock, and just
continued with a level head; he still had the house edge on his side, after all, and it wasn’t as if the house
had started losing heavily yet. It wasn’t even his own money that he was losing. But the dealer was
determined to crack Balot, to work out what she was thinking. His smile remained, but it was growing
more and more strained.
–Does this person still want to bankrupt me, Oeufcoque?
–It seems so. Of course, all that’s really happening is that he’s losing the plot.
–Whyis he even that bothered? It’s just a job for him, isn’t it?
–That’s the sort of person he is, no doubt. He needs to be in control. Trouble is, the dealer doesn’t
really have any direct influence over his own game. Take away the natural advantage that he has by
playing to the rules and the dealer’s not much more than a bystander, after all.
–I see that.
–The trouble is, there are some dealers who try and use that natural advantage as a shield,
stepping out of line and going over and above the call of duty to try and get more. This dealer is a
perfect example of that: he’s cold, calculating, and very, very good at parting punters from their
money. The corollary of this is that he needs to be in control at all times—he’s the dominating type.
And that’s something that we can use to our own advantage in so many ways.
It wasn’t long before the Doctor picked up on the turn of events and pitched in wholeheartedly to their
strategy of befuddling the dealer. He nodded along at Balot’s impenetrable statements and threw back a
few of his own for good measure.
“I must say, I’m most impressed, O niece of mine. It seems like I’ve created a monster!” The Doctor
praised her conspicuously and lavishly, virtually forcing the dealer to follow suit. The dealer wasn’t quite
sure what he was supposed to be praising, of course. Before long he found himself talking in the most
abstract of terms: most impressive, wonderful, how perceptive of madamoiselle.
The game reached its middle stages, and another instruction came fromOeufcoque.
–Try changing your posture now. When the next hand comes, cross your legs.
Balot did as she was told, crossing her legs as soon as her second card was on the table.
The dealer shouldn’t really have been able to see under the table, of course, but nevertheless he
seemed intently focused on her actions.
–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 of 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 himto 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 froma girl. “Don’t you worry about me. It might look like I’mlosing 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 fromthe 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 themto 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 himup.
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 mychips.
“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 hima 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 themhad 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 shuf le to convert all your chips into tenthousand-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. Everysingle 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
themfromthe 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 themnow. 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…
Balot tapped the Doctor’s armagain.
“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.
The dealer’s total was eighteen. Of the ten bullets that Balot and the Doctor fired toward him, one
missed and the other nine landed with deadly accuracy. The dealer was at death’s door.
–The prize is within our grasp now.
Oeufcoque’s words floated up on Balot’s hand as if he were giving her his blessing. Balot was truly
thankful to have Oeufcoque silently watching over her.
–All we need now is a couple more good chances and you should be able to pin it down.
By “it,” Oeufcoque of course meant the thing that they had come to this casino for. The four milliondollar
chips. The Doctor’s instructions came to mind again—they must steal the yolk without touching the
white or the shell.
The payout came. Between them Balot and the Doctor were looking at over half a million dollars. The
plump lady might have lost big to the house, but in one fell swoop Balot and the Doctor had won almost
five times as much fromthe casino.
–See, it’s like I said. Stop being stingy with your chips, and theystop being stingyto you!
Balot grinned cheekily, as if to say that this was only natural.
–But it’s going to be a little tricky now, isn’t it, Uncle? With all these chips cluttering up the
table, I mean.
“Fine, well, once we manage to win a bit more we can exchange our chips for larger denominations.”
–Okay, Uncle! We’ll just have to win some more then!
“Sure. I think that if we could double what we have now then that ought to do it.”
That bizarre conversation out of the way, Balot gave a convincing show of bracing herself for the next
set of cards. Likewise the Doctor.
The dealer stared at the pair of themin shock, as if they had each just grown a pair of wings.
–Now we need to make sure this dealer stays put at this table.
Instructions fromOeufcoque flashed up.
–We need to convince the house that we’re a useful set of customers, ready to be milked for all
we’re worth. Otherwise they might switch dealers on us or even ask us to leave the casino.
At this point Balot noticed that the dealer was listening to instructions being sent to him through his
earpiece. It seemed that the dealer had asked an attendant for more chips, and that the attendant reported
this back to the floor manager. The dealer was being subjected to a lecture from an authoritative-sounding
voice.
The floor manager’s analysis was that the pair at the table were probably ordinary punters, high
rollers who had somehow slipped through the net of the casino’s usually comprehensive VIP screening.
But until their identities could be confirmed for sure, the dealer’s orders were to try and contain them.
Keep the bets as low as possible, set a house maximum limit, and distract them with prizes and trinkets—
free-stay coupons at the hotel, first-class plane tickets, and whatnot. Balot, though, had no intention of
being contained by such things. She had to come up with a plan. She thought about what her opponent
wanted. How she could act as if she were about to fulfil their needs.
–Hey, Uncle? Why don’t we play a different sort of game now? First to use up all their chips?
Balot gave her best impression of a spoiled brat who always got her way, however capricious.
“Come again?”
–A battle between me and you. First to get rid of all their chips wins.
The Doctor was visibly stunned. As was the dealer. “That’s not, er, what this game is really about,
you know? Or rather, I should say that’s not how you play at a casino…” said the Doctor.
–What about lowball poker, then? When the weakest hand is the winner?
“Well, sure, but even then, the aimis still to win the chips…”
–But it’s so boring right now!
“Well, then, if you insist, why don’t we go for something like a high-low split? First to either reach the
target or get rid of all their chips wins? If you manage to beat me I’ll buy you whatever you want on the
way home.”
–You’re on, Uncle! I’m going to thrash you!
The conversation had taken such a strange turn that the dealer had to struggle to keep up. But at least
one thing was clear.
“We’ve got a pair of easy marks here, sir. Sitting ducks,” the dealer whispered into his earpiece in a
voice that was inaudible to Balot and the Doctor—or rather, would have been inaudible if not for Balot’s
powers. Balot understood that she and the Doctor were angels, the answer to all the dealer’s prayers, for
he would be able to get what he wanted from them—his marks. Balot felt the last twinges of pity for this
man disappear. If he saw her as no more than a pigeon to be plucked, she’d deliver the same back to him,
with interest.
–Well played.
Oeufcoque’s words floated up on her hand, and she squeezed back at them as she placed her chips for
the next hand. The Doctor placed his chips too. The dealer never did get around to setting that house
maximum; he was trapped in a quagmire of his own making.
–This dealer already has one foot in the grave as far as this casino is concerned.
Oeufcoque was providing a commentary now.
–Not only that, it’s the foot in the grave bearing his weight at the moment. This dealer is no longer
acting like an employee should. He’s taking this personally. He’s forgotten all his responsibilities and
duties as an employee.
Indeed, the man in front of Balot, Marlowe John Fever, now had eyes for one thing and one thing only:
to bring down Balot and the Doctor, even if it took all the chips in the casino to do it.
–Right, we’re going to divide our strategy into three parts.
Oeufcoque had the measure of the dealer now and dictated a new course of play. The bankroll was
divided into three piles. The tactical grid on Balot’s left hand split into three distinct tables, each showing
their own sets of figures.
–We’ll make tactical adjustments on a hand-by-hand basis.
The idea was to divide Balot’s chips into three piles and to treat each pile as if it belonged to a
different player. The first would be the sacrificial victim to pave the way for the other two. The second
would perform a supporting task, gradually building up something of a bankroll. The third was there to
deal the knockout blow when the time was just right.
Balot also had to signal the Doctor’s moves too, so there were four lines of tactics in play at any given
time.
Balot had her hands full. It was true that her newly expanded bankroll gave her some breathing space,
but the sort of tactics she was now attempting were far beyond the reach of a normal human being. It was
only because Oeufcoque was with her that she’d be able to perform the sort of complex calculations that
were needed to pull it off—all without the dealer being able to see through her plan.
The game progressed, Balot winning steadily all the while. Just as they entered the final stages
Oeufcoque gave another instruction.
–Time to give the dealer a bit of a jolt, I think. We can’t have him get too coolheaded.
For this was indeed what had been happening as the game had started to calmdown again.
–What should I do?
The answer to Balot’s question was a tough one to swallow.
–You reallythink I should saysomething like that?
–I do. The time is ripe.
Having received her orders, Balot gauged her timing, and when the moment was right she tapped the
Doctor’s arm.
“What is it?”
Balot left the slightest of pauses before unleashing the words that cut like a knife:
–I want to play at another table.
The Doctor’s mouth flew open. But if he was surprised, the dealer looked as if he’d seen a ghost—no,
as if his whole world were about to collapse around him. This girl, this girl who knew nothing, was
rejecting her own table? When she was on such a winning streak?
The Doctor protested, as if he were interceding for the dealer. “How come? You’re doing so well
here! It’s time to press our advantage! Wasn’t it you yourself who said that we needed to be in it to win
it?”
The Doctor, of course, understood Balot’s game perfectly. She had been worried for a moment that he
might actually take her literally, thinking she was flaking, and that the Doctor really might get up to leave
the table as she suggested. But he showed no sign of moving.
–Fine, be like that. I’ll just win some more chips at this table, then.
The dealer almost choked at the way Balot phrased this—so resentful!
The red marker appeared during the next hand. The dealer went bust, and the round was over.
The dealer hastily collected the cards. No longer could his hand movements be described as slick and
smooth—his actions were those of a man scrambling to load a revolver. This is what I’m going to use to
kill them, his fingertips seemed to say. Balot focused her attention on those fingertips.
While she did this, the Doctor engaged the dealer in conversation, playing the part of a punter eager to
fill the time before the action could recommence.
And the manner in which the Doctor addressed him—“Marlowe” or even “Buddy,” he called the man,
treating himas an equal, like a long-lost friend.
Just as he has ever since he sat down at the table, come to think of it.
Something clicked—and Balot realized exactly why the Doctor was doing this, why the Doctor had
planned it from the start. It was to treat the dealer as an individual, to distinguish him from the casino. To
strip away the dealer’s attachments, his sense of duty and responsibility toward his employers.
The shuffle was over soon enough, and the dealer handed the red marker to Balot.
Balot sensed the pile of cards and thrust the red marker toward the blind spot—the place that would
cause the cards to flow with maximum advantage to the players and maximum disadvantage to the dealer.
She did this without the dealer realizing what she was doing.
Balot placed the red marker on the pile of cards. Just like that. Not in them, on top of them. It was
almost as if she were mocking the dealer, making fun of the whole process. In reality though, there was
more to her actions than mere mockery.
The dealer’s hands wavered in midair. He did his best to pull the situation back, to proceed on to the
cut as smoothly as possible. His actions may have looked convincing enough to the casual bystander, but
in fact he missed his target spectacularly—by a wide margin. It was as if the gun that he had so carefully
prepared and loaded—the weapon he had to protect him—had now fallen into enemy hands and was
being turned against him.
–That was your judgment call, was it?
–Yup.
–You said the dealer was manipulating the order of the cards—this is related to that, is it?
–I just thought it was the best place for the marker. It’s made a lot of the smaller cards end up at
the end of the pile.
–How many?
–Thirtycards. All sevens or lower.
Balot thought she felt Oeufcoque grinning inside her gloves.
–Very good. Now, let’s give our dealer friend another little jolt like before.
–What do you want me to saythis time?
She was almost afraid to ask. And indeed Oeufcoque’s answer was that she should deliver a veritable
death blow. His aimwas so true. Ruthless.
–Who are you and what have you done with Oeufcoque?
–What have I done with…
–Oeufcoque. Half-baked, wishy-washy. That’s what you’re supposed to be, it’s what your name
means, isn’t it? And yet here you are!
–Hmph, you mean I’m going too far instead of not far enough for once? Maybe you’re right. But
needs must—this is a case where the ends justify the means.
The mouse doth protest too much, Balot thought to herself.
She giggled inside, then squeezed her glove to show that it was okay, she was with him. Then she did
as he had suggested.
–Hey, Uncle?
She waited until the dealer was just about to finish exhaling and was at his most defenseless before
continuing with her killer blow.
–I’m bored here. Won’t you take me someplace where there are some nice men around?
She was no longer rejecting the place. This was a personal rejection: she found the dealer
unappealing. The dealer’s expression didn’t change. Instead, he stopped breathing. As if he’d had his
breath sucked out of him. Indeed, for all practical intents and purposes Marlowe was now dead as a
dealer; no longer was he the invincible master of the gaming table. He was a private individual, and a
snubbed one at that.
The Doctor tried awkwardly to persuade Balot to stay. “Let’s just try and enjoy the game, no? Look,
you are winning, after all. If you give up now you’re turning your back on the rainbow that could lead to
the pot of gold.”
Then he turned to the dealer and shrugged apologetically.
It was the dealer’s turn to speak. “I do apologize most sincerely for any way in which you find me
lacking, my lady…” It was a small miracle that he could still muster up the self-restraint necessary to
maintain his composure and keep smiling.
Then the dealer removed his earpiece with his hand and crushed it beneath the table. He was out of
radio contact with the rest of the casino. But Balot had managed to catch the last transmission that the
dealer had received.
It was fromthe floor manager, a frantic order to let another dealer take his place.
≡
Outwardly calm but seething with rage and shame on the inside, the dealer was now losing hand over
fist without even noticing that he was doing so.
–Just as well that he’s usually such an accomplished dealer. The casino really is on the defensive—
they don’t know how to play this one.
Oeufcoque too had noticed that the dealer had rid himself of his earpiece.
Despite this fact, and somewhat surprisingly, the casino had yet to send along a replacement.
–They must be finding it hard to decide whether this dealer has lost the plot or whether he still
might be able to pull it back for them. They should have checked us out by now.
–Do theystill think we’re suckers? Easymarks who just happen to be on a luckystreak?
–They must. The one person in the whole casino who should be able to identify us accurately is
Shell-Septinos. He’s supposed to be the owner here…
Balot shrugged inwardly.
–He’s probablyforgotten all about us, right? With that operation that sucks out his memories…
–It doesn’t suck themout, exactly…
Oeufcoque chuckled grimly.
–According to our sources, he’s preoccupied with this transaction he’s trying to set up. This really
is our chance right now.
–Transaction? You mean his marriage?
–Exactly. Or rather the de facto promotion that he gets by marrying into the family of the house he
works for. If we can pull the rug from under his feet then we may be able to bring his bosses down too
—they’re the real target, after all.
Bring them down and send them to hell—that was what Oeufcoque wanted to say, but he just
managed to restrain himself.
It would have been easy enough to simply batter the enemy into submission, after all. They had the
means right in front of them. But it was more complicated than that, however thrilling the prospect was of
seeing the enemy squirm.
To be burnt out. It meant something. To know. It wasn’t so much the question of good versus evil that
concerned Oeufcoque and the Doctor—it was the question of innocence and experience. What you could
learn from seeing the world, with all its wonders and horrors reflected back at you. Could Balot learn,
could she respond? If not then Oeufcoque wouldn’t have gone out of his way to help her as he did.
Balot sat there silently, waiting for her moment. The point tally was rising steadily. She was winning
at a rate of over 60 percent of the hands, and this winning streak showed no sign of abating. The nines in
the pile of cards had all been used up, and the number of cards worth seven or below had been depleted
massively. The ratio of tens to other cards changed massively, and then suddenly there was a run of aces,
appearing like a sudden gold rush and then disappearing again, a flash in the pan.
The cards were plunging toward an inevitable equilibrium. Balot maintained her calm breathing, but
inside her heart was pounding.
Then there was a succession of small cards—the calmbefore the squall. The moment had arrived.
–This is it. Time to go all-in.
Balot took her cue from Oeufcoque and placed her hands on the pile that she had been keeping safe.
One of the three piles she had created from her bankroll. Her troops that she had held in reserve, ready to
be deployed in the moment of certain victory.
It wasn’t a huge pile in physical terms, as the individual chips were all of high denominations. But
when the dealer clocked just how much was now at stake, his hand that had been resting on the card shoe
jolted as if he had been struck by lightning.
–Might as well use them up…
Balot spoke to the Doctor, but it was the dealer she was watching.
“Very good. I accept your challenge, O niece of mine!” The Doctor responded as if he were calling a
raise in poker and piled his chips onto the table to follow suit.
And then there was half a million dollars’ worth of chips in front of Balot, with the Doctor not too far
behind, with a stake of roughly three hundred thousand dollars.
Passersby couldn’t help but stop in their tracks when they saw the extraordinary sums that were now at
stake. They whispered among themselves. The dealer somehow managed to drag his hand back to the card
shoe and force out a smile for the benefit of Balot and the Doctor.
The atmosphere around the table had certainly taken a strange turn.
The cards arrived. An 8. That was to say, the majority of the cards now on the table were eights.
The Doctor had an 8 and an 8, a total of sixteen. Balot had an 8 and a 7, total fifteen.
The dealer’s upcard was also an 8.
“Stay,” said the Doctor.
–Stay.
The dealer gulped and turned over his hidden card.
It was a 7. He drew again: 8. Then the red marker appeared.
The red card that represented absolute, perfect victory for Balot and the Doctor.
The dealer froze, while the spectators seemed to boil over with excitement.
Some of them understood the significance of the sequence of cards that had just passed. The magic of
sevens and eights. When the remaining cards were a couple of sevens and at least four eights, the dealer
was doomed by the rules to lose, no matter what.
All the players had to do in this situation was stay. Whether the dealer had fourteen, fifteen, or sixteen,
he’d have to draw and would end up busting.
Such was the power of percentages. The rules that had been so meticulously crafted to give the house
its edge; this was the one moment when they were turned upside down, guaranteeing the house certain
defeat. It was a gun fired at point-blank range: absolute.
–Hmm, I don’t seem to be able to use the chips up. Theyjust keep on growing.
Balot was so casual as to seem offhand. The Doctor smiled at her. “Well, then, we’ll just have to ask
for a nice big special container to fit everything in.”
The Doctor spoke as if he were ordering a particularly rare vintage wine, and the crowd responded
accordingly. The whole floor—up until a few moments ago so serene and tranquil—was now buzzing.
Amid the noise the dealer located another radio to speak to an attendant. To ask him to comply with
the Doctor’s request. To bring out the casino’s greatest treasure.
Eventually the attendant emerged fromthe other side of the floor, carrying a scarlet box.
He placed it down on the table and opened it, reverentially, for Balot to behold. No sooner had he
lifted the lid than a golden light spilled out into the room. The light fromtwelve golden chips.
“Now, choose whichever one you like,” the Doctor said in an encouraging tone.
Balot knew exactly what she was doing. Gingerly, she reached out and took one of the chips that had
the OctoberCorp company emblemetched onto it. The crowd bubbled up again.
“Oh, and leave the box on the table, will you? We may need a few more of those chips before long.”
The Doctor’s words caused yet another stir in the crowd. A match with million-dollar chips at stake!
Normally such a thing was unheard of outside the special Shows.
Far from worrying about his catastrophic loss, the dealer seemed to be getting angrier and angrier. He
started shuffling again, with a vengeance. Fully intent on taking back what he had just lost.
As he shuffled, Oeufcoque was surreptitiously dissecting the contents of the chip. He caused part of
the glove to turn, gently fixing Balot’s hand so that it made a fist shape, with the chip packed away safely
in her grip out of view.
Miniature laser cutters appeared inside her fist, moving about inside the space of a few millimeters to
scan the contents of the chip, extracting its contents.
–Got it. This is where Shell’s memories are stored.
Oeufcoque extracted the contents of the chip carefully, cutting them out with absolute precision, taking
care not to damage any of the contents. He then transferred the contents into a little pocket in the gloves he
made specially for the purpose that moment. The pocket was sewn up behind the memory chip, and the
hole left in the original was filled up with identical material so that no one would ever have been able to
guess that it had been tampered with. The whole process was done in absolute silence.
To take the yolk without touching the white or the shell. This was what it was all about. The whole
operation took slightly less than five minutes.
Balot’s right hand was released, and she slowly opened her hand that held the chip.
–One down, three to go.
The words floated up inside Balot’s left hand, and she squeezed back in return.
At that moment, Balot was assailed by a sensation she hadn’t experienced before.
Oeufcoque’s writing was always inside her glove, never on the outside. The letters themselves were
inside out. Furthermore Balot’s hand was bunched tight. Their conversation should have been utterly
undetectable to the outside eye.
And yet, at that very moment, Balot felt that their conversation was being watched

Book III:THE THIRD EXHAUSTChapter 9CRANK SHAFT01To survivethat was what Balot thought in response to the cards that were dealt to her.She had no intention of being killed a second time without putting up some resistance. Instead she washere so that she could grasp her enemy's heart in her hand, and in order to do that she had to stay in thegame at all costs. She had to survive the game that the man called Shell had drawn her into. She had tomake the game her own and solve her case.Blackjackthat was the name of this, the last game in the casino.The dealer dealt the cards, starting from the right. The first card Balot was dealt was the queen ofclubs. Worth ten points, a good card, a useful card. The suit was irrelevant in this game.Wow, clubs really are your suit. They helped you win at poker too, didn't they? Oeufcoque'swords floated up inside the glove covering her left hand.Is this a good omen, do you think?Well, it's not a bad one.Oeufcoque said this to calm Balot down, to make her feel better. Balot clung to these words, claspingher hands together as if in prayer, and watched as the dealer's upcard was revealed. Unfortunately, it wasthe ace of clubs.How's that not bad?She couldn't stop herself. Inside her gloves, though, Oeufcoque just shrugged, she thought.Then Balot's second card was dealt to her. Another club. But a 6 this time. Her total was now sixteen.Her eyes flew involuntarily to the dealer's second card. The card that faced down, next to the ace.She heard the voice of the monocled man who sat at the far right of the table, bold and resolute, callingfor another cardhit.Balot was about to look toward him, but Oeufcoque quickly stopped her.You don't need to worry about other people's cards just yet.Balot looked down at her cards. The problem wasn't the cards but Balot herself. Suddenly her heartstarted racing. What if she got it wrong? For the first time since she had entered the casino, Balot feltnervous. She tried to remember what sort of number sixteen was, but found that she couldn't. What had theDoctor said to her again? Was it a good number or a bad number?She heard the monocled man calling stay. The old man stayed too.The woman hitthen paused a moment before staying.Hit. The Doctor's voice, right next to her. Her heart skipped a beat. It took every ounce of her selfcontrolnot to look at the Doctor's cards. Her heart pounded hard, and she was in turmoil. A veritableearthquake.Stay, said the Doctor. He was going to weather this one out.Balot raised her head. Her eyes met the dealer's. She was sucked in completely.Hit.The dealer dealt her third card in a well-rehearsed move, turning the card over in front of her withmachinelike precision. Jack of spades. She felt like she had been stabbed by the spade itself.Bust. The dealer reported the outcome as everything was swept away. Her cards and her chips, allgone in an instant. And with it, the game, at least for this round. The dealer collected them all anddeposited themin their designated places, then turned his hidden card over.It was a 7. According to the rules, this made a soft eighteenthe ace and the 7. This meant that Balotwould have lost regardless of whether she stayed or hit. So hitting might have been the right decision afterall.Or was it?She heard a humming sound. It was the monocled man. Had Balot not called just then, the one-eyedjackjack of spadeswould have come to him. Tough luck.In blackjack, where you chose to sitand whom you chose to sit next tocould end up influencingyour game considerably. Someone who drew cards needlessly could spoil things for everyone else and inparticular the players right next to youBalot remembered the Doctor telling her something like this. Thisfactor worked in the dealer's favor.And yet a moment ago she hadn't been able to remember anything. Balot reproached herself.The dealer divided up the winners and the losers in much same way you would sort through thecontents of your pocketsthings you needed, things you didn't. This time it was the Doctor and the oldman who had won. Their money doubled.Let's move on to the first step of our plan , Oeufcoque said as if the preceding game had neverhappened.What was I supposed to do back there? Did I make the right move?The first thing you need to do is be able to work out the answer to that question for yourself.That hardly answered her question. Balot silently placed her next chips down. She felt bitterlydisappointed.Balot's next card was a 2. She ignored the suit this time. Then a 5total seven.The dealer's upcard was a jack. Ten points. And so the game began again, based on the cards inBalot's hand versus the upcard.I'm going to display your funds, Oeufcoque's words floated up.First, Balot's entire bankroll. Next to that, her working capital, divided into ten equal parts. Then, themaximum and the minimum that she could bet per game. Finally, the total amount she had spent so far.That was the money management systemdevised by Oeufcoque.The basis of a sound strategy in a casino was neither a head for figures nor an eye for humanpsychology. It was more fundamental than that; you needed an effective system to keep track of yourmoney.According to the odds, it was not possible in the long run to turn the house edge aroundstatisticallythe numbers were against the player. But that was the long run. In the short run, it was perfectly possiblefor the player to enjoy a winning streak. The key factor was this: when riding the crest of the wave of awinning streak, keep track of the funds in play and manage the bank to stay in play through the drierpatches.Balot had just put down three hundred dollars in chips. The same amount as in the previous hand. Theamount wasn't a true representation of Balot's feelings. It was just a tactical sum, an expeditionary force.Balot's total bankroll at that precise moment was just over $630,000.So one tenth of this would be her mini-bank, enough for one session.This worked out to be slightly over $63,000. They'd take a break once this was used up one way oranother; that was the idea.The maximum bet on any particular hand would be one twentieth of the mini-bank, and the minimumbeti.e. the basic unitone tenth of that.In other words, at the moment Balot should start with bets of just over three hundred dollars.When the maximum bet per hand was one tenth of the mini-bank, there would be a one percentpossibility of losing all their capital. If, though, they adjusted their bets according to the flow of play andthe fluctuation in their funds, it would be possible to limit the chance of bankruptcy to less than 0.01percent.Well, let's start of by seeing what we can do.After the numbers had been shown on Balot's right hand, this message came up on her left beforedisappearing in an instant.That was the moment Balot realized why she was so nervous.It was because there was so little that she could do. The only thing the players had any influence overin these games was the chips. Partly to preempt the possibility of cheating, players weren't even allowedto touch their own cards.Not for this game the psychological warfare of poker or the finely tuned sensory perception involvedin roulette. All there was to do here was walk the tightrope of uncertainty over and over again.This was why she felt unusually impatient and susceptible to being swept away by the action.But the key to successfully traversing that tightrope wasn't just luck. It was a meaningful activityprecisely because it was possible to separate out the factors that you could influence from the factors thatyou couldn't. This was the lessonindeed, the first principlethat Oeufcoque and the Doctor hadhammered into her fromday one.This was all reverberating inside her now, in her mind, in her heart.Before long it was Balot's turn. She looked at her cards again. A 2 and 5, a total of seven.Hit.A no-brainer. There wasn't a single card she could draw at this point that would make her go bust. Infact, for all intents and purposes her next card could be considered her real second card. The card came,and it was an 8and now her total was fifteen.The upcard was a jack, ten points. The dealer had to keep on drawing until he reached seventeen orhigher, those were the rules. The only way Balot could win with her fifteen was if the dealer bust.Wouldn't it be better for her to draw another card, then? This, rather than any complicated statisticalcalculation, was Balot's rationale for her next move.Hit.Her heart missed a beat as she proclaimed her next move. In a different way from the previous hand,though; she felt that this was somehow her choice this time, rather than a move she made involuntarilywhile swept up in the flow of the game.The fourth card was revealed right in front of her eyes in a swift movement. The number was 7. Hertotal was twenty-two.Bust.Her chips dissipated into the ether, just like with the previous hand.It stands to reason, seemed the general feeling at the table. Why, after all, should it be easy for a littlegirl like her to master the deep mysteries of such a game? The dealer and the other players could havetold her that.That was fine with Balot. It was no more than the truth, after all. Part of her did really feel this way,and it seemed for a moment that there was a different version of herself sitting in the chair.The dealer drew his card and it was a 6his total was now sixteen. As per his obligation under therules he drew another. A 5. Total twenty-one. There were sighs all around.Had Balot not drawn her last card, the dealer would have gone bust, and everyone at the table wouldhave won.Instead, as a result of Balot's actions, everyone lost. Having said that, Balot was no longer bothered.If you wanted to win, you should have predicted what cards I was going to draw, she thought,unapologetic.Everyone's chips were collected, and a new game began. After that Balot lost two more hands, wonone, and then seemed to settle into a pattern of winning and losing alternate hands.When you were destined to lose a hand you lost it, no matter how you bet or what you triedthat wasblackjack.You could lose because you had drawn a card, and you could lose because you hadn't.You could draw on a twelve and bust, or you could stay on a sixteen and lose because of it. Then therewere those hands where you were always going to lose whether you drew another card or not, becausethe dealer simply had a better hand. This happened not once or twice, but repeatedly.On the other hand, it could go the other wayyou didn't have to do anything and could simply winover and over again. Whatever you did, whatever the other players did. Call it luck if you like, but suchluck didn't just come out of nowhere; many battles were fought, and people had struggled with tactics andstrategy to work out the optimal course of play through blood, sweat, and tears before finally reaching thedepths of the game.The battle raged on, a microcosmof Balot's inner turmoil.Win or lose, it was all in vain if she didn't manage to keep a cool head and a steady hand.Concentrate on your breathing.Oeufcoque had to remind her constantly of this.Balot knew for herself that this was the best way for her to stay in control.Even when she had learned to use a gun, the first thing she mastered was her breathing. The Doctorhad drummed it into her that it was what she needed to focus on at all times; when she was first taken tothe hideaway, after the trial, whenever she had a headache.Balot concentrated on the feeling of what it was like when she was at her most relaxed and tried toremember what her breathing felt like then, inhaling, then exhaling. She had always thought that breathingwas one of those things that happened of its own accord, varying from hard to gentle depending on thecircumstances, but when she actually put her mind to it and focused she was surprised at how much shecould control her breath and how much in turn that improved her composure and her mood.When she breathed deeply into her stomach, she felt relief. When she breathed into her chest, she felthope. When she breathed into her shoulders she felt her whole pulse quickening, and when she breathedfocusing on her pulse she felt a strong sense of identity, of knowing the ins and outs of her body.Her aim now was to ensure that she would be able to breathe consistently and calmly, regardless ofwhether she won or lost at the table.Turning her mind to this made her realize just how stiff she had become since sitting down.Curiously, it wasn't even the high stakes that were making her feel tense and uncomfortable.Six hundred thousand dollarsan unthinkable sumof money in her previous life.As the Doctor said, it wouldn't be at all strange if she'd wanted to just take the money and run,forgetting all about the case.But the hatred that she felt burning away inside her was not about to accept the consolation prize ofmere money.The hatred that she felt was in fact for the money itself, and also for those people who were its slave.Virtually everyone she knew who was motivated by money ended up coming to grief one way or another.Not only that, the more grief they came to the further they got sucked in and the more they started believingthat money would solve all their problems. The more money you had the more you could do with it, true,but also the more it ended up doing to you.This was why it was no longer simply a question of money for Balot. She had been hurt by otherpeoples' pursuit of money, but now it was time to turn the tables and to use that very money that had hurther as her tool to do it. Balot was fired up, but she wouldn't let this fire disrupt her game. She breathed indeeply, determined to stay in control so that she was ready to make the right decisions no matter what thegame threw at her.She was a long way away from certain victoryindeed, her first mini-bank was slowly but surelybeing eaten away. At the moment it was a case of one step forward, two steps back. But neither werethere any unpleasant surprisesit was all going according to their calculations. It was all there for thetaking. All there was to do was hope for the best and plow on, best foot forward.As they were approaching the thirtieth hand, Balot suddenly realized something.Something was up with the dealer. She tried to pinpoint exactly what.When her turn came, she thought she would try something to test her observation.Hit.For a moment, the dealer was thrown off-kilter. One of the reasons for this was Balot's cards.A queen and 9. Nineteen in total. It was hardly the usual thing to draw on this sort of hand.The dealer flipped the card over. It was a 2. Balot's rather irrational move had worked in her favor,and she felt a disturbance in the breathing patterns of everyone at the table.Her total was twenty-oneher first since sitting down at the table.The dealer turned over his hidden card, which was a 10.Total: twenty. Balot was the only one to win. All eyes were on Balot as the dealer calmly paid out herwinnings.It didn't take long, though, before everyone dismissed it as a fluke and went back about their business.Balot hadn't expected to win. That fact probably registered on her face.She was onto something, thoughshe was sure of it. As she received her winnings, she thought aboutit.Mainly about whether it was something significant, not what the significance was. Not yet, anyway.Oeufcoque, there's something I want to ask you.What is it?I think the dealer is timing his deals. Aiming for the right moment.Aiming?Yeah, waiting until the instant we finish fullyexhaling before he deals.So far, it was a fragile hypothesishad Oeufcoque dismissed it out of hand as ludicrous, she wasn'tsure she would have been able to defend it.But Oeufcoque's answer struck an unexpected chord.How did you work that out?As if to say that he was just about to tell her that fact himself. Balot's suspicions were confirmed, andher vague hunch became a firmconviction that she was onto something important.I deliberatelytook a long breath. He waited for me to finish before dealing.Well, seeing as you've managed to work that out for yourself, the first stage of our work here iscomplete. You're on course to secure victory with your own two hands.Half of her was delighted by the unexpected words of encouragement and praise, but at the same timeshe was more discouraged than evershe seemed so near and yet so far.That's not true at all. I'm losing steadily and I have no idea how I'm going to turn it around.Don't worry. You don't need to start winning yet. All that's important at this stage is that you losein a meaningful way. You're playing a role in the Doctor's plan. And you will win yet. With me here toback you up.Now Balot was fired up again. She felt supportedas if there were a strong pillar inside her, suppleand flexible, there to prop her up, unbreakable.Now that this hand is over, there'll be a break.Hearing Oeufcoque's words, Balot looked at the card shoe. Sure enough, the clear red marker that shehad shoved into the pile of cards was now showing, signifying an imminent reshuffle.We'll move on to the next stage of our plan after the shuf le.Balot squeezed both her hands tightly by way of reply.The game halted. The dealer collected all the cards and started the shuffle in a series of smoothmovements.According to the tally that showed in her right palm, a total of twenty-eight hands had been played sofar. Balot had only won seven of these. Three were draws, and she had lost the remaining eighteen hands.She was currently down $3,300.Conversation between the players broke out again.Balot watched the shuffle. She felt that she might be able to pick something upthe reason he dealt intempo with the players' breathing. Whatever the reason, she had a gut feeling that she'd be able to startusing her abilities shortly. She wasn't about to surrender her fate to luck.As she was thinking the Doctor said, I told you you'd enjoy yourself! The fat lady next to him wasgrinning in her direction too.Balot nodded. A calm, composed gesture. The Doctor smiled broadly and engaged the lady inconversation again. He was saying that even an innocent young thing like Balot couldn't resist the allureof a game like this. In other words, he was covering for Balot's somewhat unnatural manner.Before long the shuffle was over, and the dealer handed the red marker to the monocled man, whoplaced it in the pile of cards. The cards were cut, and round two was about to begin.Time to move on to stage two of our plan. I'll give you the basic tactics.Oeufcoque's words appeared in her palm, and at the same time a table containing symbols andnumbers started to appear on the other side. Information on how to compare her hand with that of thedealer.I'm going to gradually start feeding you more information.Balot quickly referenced her card against the chart on her hand.The rows were her card totals, and the columns the dealer's upcard. Cross-referencing the twoshowed what move would be tactically optimal under what circumstances.At the moment, her cards were 9 and 5, a total of fourteen. The dealer's upcard, 5.The table showed that the appropriate tactic in these circumstances was Sthe symbol for stay.Balot would have played it differently, but she would have been wrong. Under these circumstances,the best option was not to battle it out but to sweat it out, however odd that seemed to her.She did as the chart indicated and gave the signal to stay.The dealer glanced at Balot as he turned over his hidden card. A queenbringing his total up tofifteen.The dealer now had to draw another cardthose were the rules, as his total was below seventeen. Hedrew a jack. Total twenty-fivebust. Balot was genuinely impressed.And I could have sworn that I should have hit.That would have been a mistake under those circumstances. The most common value of a card inthis game is ten. There are four dif erent typesthe king, queen, jack, and ten. The cards in our handhave little ef ect on the dealer's chances of going bust. According to a simple calculation the chanceof drawing a ten is 31 percentfour times as likely as any other card.The ten factor, Balot answered Oeufcoque unconsciously. She'd had all this explained to heralready, but it was different in real life, and she had had to experience it to believe it. Balot straightenedherself up and tried to digest the implications of what had just happened.So, when the dealer's upcard is a five, he has a 43 percent chance of going bust. That's more thantwo times out of every five. When that happens and you don't have a strong hand, your best chance ofwinning is to hold tight and wait for the dealer to self-destruct.After the payouts were completed, the cards for the next hand were dealt. Jack and 6, total sixteen.The dealer's upcard was a 7.The relevant corner of the tactics grid was highlighted. The symbol was Hhit.Another unexpected move. Balot would have felt more comfortable staying. But she knew that this wasjust because she had yet to fully absorb all the information that she had been taught, to assimilate it andmake it her own.Oeufcoque seemed to sense Balot's self-reproach and jumped in to explain the logic behind this move.If we stay on any number between twelve and sixteen when the dealer has an upcard of seven orhigher, we stand a 75 percent chance of losing. Conversely, when we have a total of seventeen or overand the dealer has an upcard of between two and six, we're better of stayingthe odds areoverwhelmingly in our favor.Seven up. Seventeen or higher for the player, seven or higher for the dealer.Again the lessons that Balot had been taught came flooding back.Exactly right. Whereas the worst sort of hand for us is a fifteen or sixteen, when we can expect tolose. Here, hitting reduces our chance of losing from 75 percent to 63 percent. Better to move thannot.Balot obeyed and hit, drawing her third card.Unfortunately it was a king. Well and truly bust.The dealer's next card turned out to be a jack, also worth ten. Total seventeen. Whatever Balot haddone she would have lost. Better to have gone out fighting and taken the chance to improve the odds, evenif she happened to have been unsuccessful this time.Blackjack was a losers' game. It was simply impossible to win all the time. The key was not to expectto win every hand but to play the odds so that you created conditions that were as favorable as possible.To win, a player needed great staying powerthe force of mind to keep on going down that long andwinding road.The next hand was a case in point. Balot's hand was a 10 and 5and a fifteen was fully expected tolose.The dealer's upcard was a queen. Not the time to stay, then. There was the option of surrendering, butnow wasn't the right time to start retreating and playing defensively. The bankroll was still nice and thick,and even the first mini-bank was still intact, so it was no time to roll over and play dead.Hit.The dealer glanced at Balot again. He dealt her a 4.Stay.It was Balot's reflexes that spoke now. Her new total was nineteen. The dealer drew his card. An 8.Balot and the monocled man were the only winners.For a brief moment, Balot felt that she had accomplished something tangible, however slight. Sheexhaled, deeply.02I think the time is ripe for you to start paying some attention to your surroundings.Oeufcoque said this, attuned as he was to the subtleties of her feelings, in response to Balot'sincreasing interest in the players all around her. He was now allowing Balot to progress, to do somethingthat he had previously forbidden.Thanks. It's just that I really want to know how other people are playing. She started to explainherself, why she was getting so impatient, but Oeufcoque cut her off.No need to apologize. It really is most impressive how quick you are at picking up on all this. It'son the early side to do so, but I really think you are ready to move on to the third stage.No sooner had the words floated up on Balot's hand and registered with her than they disappeared,replaced by a new set of tables. There was now roughly six times as much information displayed as therehad been before. Specifically tables showing the collated tactics of everyone at the table up to this point,including the dealer. And the results: how many hands won, how many lost.The monocled man was in the lead, with the old man and the Doctor not too far behind. The lady andBalot seemed to be losing hands in equal measure.Also shown was the regularity with which the dealer bust, roughly one in five times.The statistics that most interested Balot were those relating to the monocled man. He was on a winningstreak, and an impressive one at that. He was riding the crest of the wave of victory. The question waswhether this was due to the man's skill or his luck.The cards were dealt. Balot received a jack and 2.The monocled man, on the other hand, had a 4 and 6a total of ten.Double down, said the man. The dealer's upcard was 4. The man's move was entirely consistentwith what was showing on Oeufcoque's table. The man added his chips to the pile and drew a 9. Totalnineteen. When you called double down, you were permitted to draw only one additional cardso thiswas 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 5total 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 chipson the table.The dealer's upcard was a 3. According to Oeufcoque's tactical grid, he should be staying rather thandrawing. 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 thedealer didn't get a blackjack himself.The monocled man had his wish granted when the dealer bust and lost. All the playersincludingBalotwere winners that round, but the monocled man won more than the rest of themand was obviouslydelighted by this fact.Then in the next hand the man hit on sixteen and won, and the game was brought to a close. During theshuffle the topic of conversation among the players was, rather inevitably, the monocled man's winningstreak.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 tableby 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 chordwith Balot. Then she realized that she was thinking about an important aspect of the game from all thewrong angles.Can you tell me how much moneyeveryone 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 ofwins and losses to date for each playerP&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 wasconsiderably in the red. The old man was doing the best, closely followed by the Doctor. Balot had lostfairly heavily at first but was now keeping her losses down to about half the rate she was losing at thestart. The monocled man and the lady were both roughly on a par with each other; that is to say, they wereboth 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 havethat'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'ssenses, causing himto lose track of his numbers.Well, it's partly because of the way blackjack works, of course, and the man's personality onlyexacerbates this. But the dealer has a hand in it tooI can smell something deliberate about the wayhe's stringing the man along.Deliberate? In what way?In a most ingenious and subtle wayThe shuffle had finished, and now it was the old man's turn to stick the transparent red marker into thestack of cards. The cards were cut, and the monocled man greedily thrust his chips forward. Five hundreddollars' worth. Judging by the size of his bet the man ought to have had a total bankroll of close to amillionbut he almost certainly had nothing of the sort.The first cards were dealt. Balot paid close attention to the timing.Sure enough, the cards were released the instant the monocled man was out of breath. He took a lightgulp as the first card landed.The man's card was a 9. The cards were then dealt to the other players in turn; Balot had a 7 in frontof her.The dealer's upcard was a 4. The players' second cards were dealt in sharp succession, stabbing likea knife. The man was dealt a 6, and it made himchoke on the air in his throat.The instant after Balot's second card was dealt, she heard the man's voice: Double down. Beforeshe could stop herself she glanced at the man's cards to double-check what he had. A total of fifteen.A losing hand, according to all logic. Judging by the way the other players were all watching the handlike hawks, Balot wasn't the only one interested in the outcome of the draw.It was an 8. Total twenty-three, and bust. The man's face crumpled.Suddenly Balot realized she ought to think about her own cards. A 7 and jack. A hand to stay.Somehow her cards were making less of an impression on her than they had been. Not that she wasdoing anything wrong because of this; it was a straightforward choice, her cards dictating the obviousoptimal move. Still, there was no doubt she was being distracted by the monocled man and his cardssucked into his game, as it were.Why am I so compelled to watch this man? Is that because of the dealer too?She really only asked this question in order to distance herself, to try and refocus her mind. But:That's right. You're half under the dealer's spell too.Balot squirmed inside when she heard these words.The dealer's ultimate aim is to throw you all of balance, so that you end up acting in ways thatyou wouldn't normally. That's why he's paying such close attention to all your breathing rhythms andpicking his moment so precisely.Breathing rhythms?The basis of his techniques. Breath manual, it's calledaiming for that moment when people areat their most vulnerable, just in between breaths. The dealer is playing all sorts of tricks by applyingthese techniques.Such as?Well, there are a number of important points to this game. One of these is the dealer's upcard. Asplayers, that's really the first thing we should be paying attention to. But it's very easy to get suckedin when we see our own cardsthey tend to make much more of an impression on us as players.Even though the man is concentrating so hard on the game?You can't really call that concentrating. Absorbed, maybe, but it's not the same thing.Oeufcoque was coming across as somewhat harsh now, and Balot straightened her posture inresponse. Oeufcoque continued.You could say that one of the dealer's tricks is to manipulate the players' impressions of thegame. He senses how the players feel, latches on to this, and gradually shifts their perceptions so thatthey lose their grip on how their game is actually going. It's a clever trick, and one that you fell fortoo.Who, me?The man at the end is completely under the dealer's spell. Whether or not the other players startcopying the man's style of play, at the very least his game is likely to leave a lasting impression. Theseeds of influence are planted, and all the dealer has to do now is cultivate them, make them grow.How?Why don't you and I play a little game?Balot's eyes widened. In another world, it had become Balot's turn at blackjack.Stay.The dealer then proceeded to reveal his hidden card. A 7. Total eleven.He drew once more, bringing his total to eighteen.Balot's chips were taken in by the house again, but the focus of her interest had shifted elsewhere.What sort of game?From now on a player will leave the table at every new shuf le. Let's try and guess which one.Leave the table? How can you know a thing like that?There's less than an hour to go before this dealer moves on. He's worked hard to bring thepunters here under his spell and doesn't want another dealer taking over and reaping the benefit.Oeufcoque spoke as if the dealer was a big game hunter on the trail of his trophy beasts.But what about if someone else comes and joins the table?Unlikely at this point. Certainly the dealer isn't expecting it.Why not?Since we arrived at this table the dealer stopped looking out at his surroundings. He's beendeliberately cultivating the impression that this is a close-knit table of friends all playing togetheraclosed shop to outsiders.Balot didn't ask him how he knew all this. As far as she was concerned her hands were cocooned in apair of magic gloves, founts of infinite knowledge and wisdom. Balot just sat there, deeply impressed.Why only one at a time, though?Everyone breathes dif erently, with dif erent rhythms. If the dealer wants to be certain, that'swhat happens. This dealer intends to pluck the players at his table one by one, thoroughly emptyingtheir pockets.She hadn't really noticed until now, but Balot's two cards had come. Jack and king, total twenty. Shedidn't need to look at the upcard to know what her move would be. Balot more or less ignored her owncards and turned her attention to the other players instead.The woman.That was Balot's guess. The monocled man might have been losing heavily, but she didn't think hewas the type to give up that easily. The old man was playing steadily and going nowhere in a hurry. If hedid move, it would be on the lady's orders, to accompany her, probably. And if anyone was going to bethe first to leave it would probably be that fat lady; she was betting extravagantly, losing heavily. Even ifshe wanted to stay on, it wouldn't be too long before she ran out of chips, surely?Fine. So if the woman is the one to stand at the next shuf le, you win.Why, who do you think it'll be?It was Balot's turn. The dealer was smiling at her, patiently waiting for her to call. It was a gentlesmile, inviting. Doing her best to fight it, she calmly called out her intention to stay.The result of the hand was that Balot was the only winner. The monocled man, red-faced, called awaiter over and snatched a glass of gin off his tray, gulping it down to try and cool off in the face of theheat of the battle.The man on the right.Balot was a little surprised at Oeufcoque's answerthe monocled man seemed so into the game afterall.Anyhow, let's enjoy the game as it unfolds and pray that no one else joins the table.Balot felt somewhat placated and placed her chips in front of her. Everyone's chips were now down,and the cards were dealt. Balot barely paid attention to her own cards anymore, focusing instead on thepiles of chips in front of the monocled man and the fat lady respectively.The man bet a minimum of five hundred dollars on every hand, doubling down whenever theopportunity presented itself.The woman's bets fluctuated randomly between around three hundred and a thousand dollars at a time.Neither showed the slightest inclination of wanting to leave their seats. As long as their bankrollswere intact, wild horses couldn't drag themaway.The next interesting development came at around ten hands after the shuffle. The monocled man had aseventeen in front of himand boldly charged on, hitting. The card he drew was a 4. Total twenty-onethemonocled man was the only winner.A prudent decision, if I may be so bold as to say so, sir, the dealer said, without missing a beat, ashe placed the cards in the discard pile. As he did so he placed the 4the card that had brought the man'shand up to the elusive winning totalon the side, as if he were admiring something precious. Balot feltsomething akin to an electric shock down her spine and rubbed the back of her neck in a reflex action asshe snarced Oeufcoque.Did the dealer saythat on purpose? To manipulate him? Not just out of politeness?Hmmpoliteness is, in itself, a form of manipulation, of course. But you're right, that wassomewhat over the topThe dealer was talking as if the man in the monocle was something special. What a kiss-ass!Well, some people like having their asses kissed, as you put it. And it opens up a chink in theirarmor. This dealer's got it all worked outwhich words he needs to use with which person in order tolay them bare. So that they enjoy themselves even as they're losing, being bled dry of their last dollar.Balot's nose wrinkled as if she smelled something burning. To enjoy yourself even as you're losing .This was all that a lot of people wanted, she supposed. Amusement was king. To head in with a cool headand a steady handthis was the sort of player the casino really didn't want.The festive, elegant atmosphere, the service nonpareil, the elegant courtesystrip that away and allthat remained was the house edge that shaved away at the customers' chips, gently but surely. That waswhy it was called the edge after all; it was as deadly and as certain as the sharpest of knives.It was then that it occurred to Balot that she really could lose her bankroll here.What would happen if she had to start all over? What about the trial? And would she really end up asuspect of crimes against the Commonwealth? Could she go back to an existence where all that was leftwas to endure, day in, day out? Her skin crawled at the thought.Suddenly the game she was playing didn't seem so interesting anymore. She had lost all thought ofamusement. Everything was riding on this battleher whole world. She couldn't allow herself to beflustered by a dealer such as this one.Cool it.A strong admonition from Oeufcoque. He sounded bluntharsh, evenbut it was a clear sign of justhow attuned he was to Balot's thoughts and feelings. He wasn't about to let her make a grave mistake.Before you go charging in, you need to have the full measure of your opponent. Forewarned isforearmed.Balot squeezed her left hand in lieu of a nod. Tightly. Then she focused her full attention on the gameat hand. On the dealer. On the other players. And on the cards. Telling herself that the long and windingroad could yet be the shortest and surest route to her final destination. After all, hadn't Oeufcoque and theDoctor been right about everything so far, showing her the best path to take?Oeufcoque's words were sinking in properly. The full measure of your opponentOeufcoque wasn'tjust helping her out of a rut. He was teaching her. Empowering her. Showing her how to fight against herown powerlessness. So that she could win. He was showing her that she had a chance, a choice. She feltfiercely in tune with the mouse at that moment.Her reverie was interrupted by the voice of the monocled man. Is this the sort of hand I should hitwith, would you say? He was asking, of all people, the dealer.The man's total was fifteen.The dealer's upcard was 8.It was a delicate call, certainly. But the dealer answered without hesitation. It depends on thecircumstances, of course, but if you were playing by the book then the correct move would be to hit, sir.A first-class dealer was always ready to respond to such questions fromthe player. He would have allthe possible combinations memorized, ready to reel them off pat. A dealer who didn't know the 290-oddpossibilities by the book wasn't a first-class dealer.Having said that, it's up to the player's mood whether he wants to double down, the dealercontinued calmly.Doubling down seemed to have become something of a signature tune for the monocled man.Of course, those who want to determine the flow of the game have to be prepared to pay the price.The monocled man nodded in agreement with the dealer's words and boldly hit. A jack to his fifteen.Bust.But the man now had his eyes closed; he seemed to take at face value the dealer's suggestion that itwas inevitable he had to pay the price and just shrugged his shoulders.It's a double bind.A double bind?That's what it's called when you manage to implant an idea in your opponent's mind, inducingthem to act in a certain way. The way the dealer handled that then, by mentioning the doubling downit made hitting become the default option for the player.But that was the right decision, wasn't it?As a basic tactic, yes, it was the right move. But the basic tactics stop being of any use onceyou're under the dealer's spell. What he's doing is conditioning the man's mind, ridding him of thepossibility of any move but hitting.Ridding him?Doubling downthat's quite a big call to make, not one you do lightly. By drawing focus to thedif icult move and juxtaposing it with an easier one, the dealer is basically suggesting that the onlyreally sensible move is the easier oneto hit. All other possibilities are forgotten. On top of that, thedealer appealed to the rather vague and ambiguous idea of the player's mood. Caught between therock and the hard place of the dif icult decision and the ambiguous instruction, the player ends upchoosing the only sensible option, which in fact is nothing of the sort. That's what the double bindis.So what should the man have done?What he should or shouldn't have done isn't really the issue. What the man should have beenfocusing onor rather, resigning himself towas the fact that he had a losing hand. But now he onlyhas eyes for victory. He's convinced himself, or allowed himself to be duped into believing, that losingalong the way is a necessary part, a price that he has to pay in order to achieve his ultimate goal. Butit's not. A losing hand is just a losing hand, nothing more, nothing less.The monocled man and the fat lady played in the same way: the more cards they drew, the more theyfocused on their own hands, paying less and less attention to the dealer's cards.Double down, called the man, only a couple of hands later. He drew a 9 to his existing hand ofthirteen and went bust.The dealer's upcard was a 6playing by the book, the man should have stayed.It was the beginning of the end for the monocled man. He might have been crumbling silently up to thispoint, but now he started crashing down with a roar. Perhaps he was playing with scared moneymoney he shouldn't have been touching, money meant for living expenses or even to pay his hotel billduring his stay. Either way, he was now on the edge, in sharp contrast to the woman, who seemed to beenjoying herself in a far healthier manner, even as she frittered away her chips.The man started doubling down on hands such as fifteen and sixteen, busting left, right, and center. Hebet large amounts on single hands and then seemed largely oblivious even when the dealer had an ace ashis upcard, recklessly doubling down regardless. The dealer started commenting on the man's choices,bolstering up his recklessness, and the man clung to these crumbs of comfort.In true Confucian style, the dealer said, Doubling down is an extremely aggressive move. Some handsare suited more for attacking, others for defending.The dealer said, Of all the players I've ever met, sir, may I say that an attacking style seems to suityou the best.The dealer said, Do please take all the time you need to decide whether this is the place to press youradvantage, sir.The dealer said, Regrets at what might have been are the surest way to ruin your game. Do make sureyou play as your heart tells youthat's the best way to ensure you have no regrets. Going with your gutinstinct is often best.The dealer had the monocled man by the snout, well and truly. The lady, too, seemed to be respondingshe was slowly but surely increasing her bets. Oeufcoque, on the other hand, responded to each of thedealer's precepts with increasingly disdainful commentary.Thus:Attacking, defending. What does that even mean in the context of this game? Nothingthey'recompletely ambiguous terms. As is the idea of hands suiting a particular style of play. All this sortof talk does is hook the player into going along with the dealer.Then:Do take all the time you need to decidethat's just a bind to force his hand. The only choiceleft in the man's mind is to double down.And:A bust is a bust, full stop. You can give it whatever name you like, call it regrets or what haveyou, but it's not going to help you one bit. Even if the game does throw him up the odd high-payingblackjack, that's not going to change the fact that overall the man is hemorrhaging money.At each step Oeufcoque was warning Balot, but he was also teaching her the game. And in a far easierand more effective manner than any sort of long-winded plan concocted at the planning table.The monocled man and the fat lady were now losing money hand over fist. Both were down well overthirty thousand dollars.What sort of person is this dealer?A bit of a prima donna. Good at his job, a real rainmaker. He knows the game inside out and he'sgood with the customers. As far as the casino is concerned, he's a real golden gooseand he knows it.I don't like him.Fine. Just don't let him know that you don't like him.What do you want me to do?When you win, smile. When you lose, sulk.She did just that for the next few hands, and the card shoe started running low.The monocled man had switched to lower value bets, a hundred dollars a hand or even less.Looks like I win our little game. Oeufcoque's voice was confident.They entered the final game of the card shoethey had hit the red card, signifying time to reshuffle atthe end of the hand.It was also the end of the road for the monocled man. He had hit on twelve, drawn a 10, gone bust, andrun out of chips. The reason he had switched to lower bets was simply because he had started to run outof money. Now he had run out.The shuffle for the next game started, and as it did the man stood up and collected the hat and coat thathe had checked.Not a good game for me, was it? he asked the dealer.Some days you need to pay the price in order to make sure your luck flows smoothly on other days,the dealer replied, his face serious.The monocled man nodded. Then he left.03The talk at the table during the next shuffle was solely focused around the cause of the monocled man'sdefeat. The Doctor set the ball rolling, and the woman asked the dealer his opinion. The dealer wouldn'tbudge from his stated view that it was a necessary and inevitable price all gamblers had to pay once in awhile, whereas the old man said that it was because he had become too heated, too passionate, so muchso that his luck had deserted him.His defeat was inevitable.Oeufcoque summed it up the best and the most succinctly.He got too caught up in his own cards, hitting too much, doubling down on high bets, tooimpressed by the idea of getting that magical twenty-one. Bound by these severe handicaps he was nomore than a sitting duck in the dealer's sights. In particular, he was far too attached to his smallcards.Small cards?Whatever way you break down the odds, the small cardscards with a face value of six and beloware advantageous to the dealer. In this case, our dealer kept on using the word attack in order todelude the man into drawing more and more of them.The man in question was now nowhere to be seen. He was like the very cards that he had played,disappearing without a trace moments after a hand was declared bust. But he wasn't the sort who waslikely to run off and lick his wounds, reflecting on what went wrong and learning a valuable lesson. No.More likely, he was the sort who'd be back sooner rather than later, like a dog to its own vomit, aimingfor that glorious victory that remained just out of reach even as he plunged headfirst into bankruptcy.Such was the bittersweet lingering memory of the world of pleasure. Balot found it difficult to feel toosorry for him, though. The man still had something of a future, and he was always going to wake uptomorrow feeling fine regardless of what the outcome at the table had been. In stark contrast to Balot, whoneeded the win. The thing that concerned her was not the fact that the man had lost. It was the fact that hehad been made to lose.The spectacular victory that the man had been aiming for had never really existed. All that hadhappened was the man had had the sweet scent of victory wafted under his nose, leading him ever fartherdown the road to ruin. He'd even been allowed to taste victory, briefly, but temporarilythe dealer hadmade sure of that. It was part of the dealer's act, part of the web of illusion that the casino sold, wrappedup in such pretty little boxes.How to cut your way through that tangled web of lies? Without a proper plan, based on logic and asound foundation, all was folly. The desire to winall this gave you was a step up on the stairway thatled to the harsh reality of ignominious defeat. Just like the Mardock, the Stairway to Heaven, that statuethat epitomized all that was ambitious and dangerous about the city.As Balot was thinking about all this, Oeufcoque's next words floated up on her hand.Looks like I won our first game.Oeufcoque seemed as casual as ever, which made Balot want to dig her heels in.Well, I'm going to win the next one.Let's start it right now, then. The woman or the old manwho's going to leave the table first?The woman, definitely.I'll choose the old man.Because I went for the lady?No. I was always going to choose the old man. Definitely.Balot couldn't help but be surprised. How on earth was the old man, clearly an accomplished playerand with the results to prove it, going to be hounded out before the fat lady who spent money like adrunken sailor?The shuffle had finished. This time it was the lady who inserted the red marker into the cards. Thedealer cut the cards again in a well-practiced movement, and it was time for the fourth round since Balotand the Doctor had taken their seats.The old man was now effectively on the far right, the monocled man having left a vacant spot. Thedealer now dealt to the old man's tempo, reading his breathing patterns like a book. The old man was amuch tougher nut to crack than the monocled man, however. Nothing seemed to perturb him. The lady nextto him bet extravagantly, and the Doctor gave a convincing impression of someone betting extravagantly,and this made the old man's actions seemparticularly composed by contrast.The dealer occasionally engaged him in conversation, offering his Confucianesque platitudes asbefore, 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 alwayscoming to you for advice.The dealer said, There aren't many people on this floor who know how to enjoy the game as much asyou, sir.The dealer said, They say that the more experience you have of life, the more likely you are to enjoythis game in a meaningful way. It seems to me, sir, that you have it all worked outyou know how toenjoy 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 youhad riding on that hand?The old man responded to the last of these sayings. No, no, it was actually rather a reckless move onmy 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 evidencewhen he was dealt a blackjack.His judgment call with such a handan ace and jacktold Balot everything she needed to knowabout his style of play.Even money, called the old man. This was a special move that a player could make only when theyhad been dealt twenty-one. This declaration guaranteed the player victoryat the expense of reducing hispayout fromone 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 thedealer drew twenty-one as well, the player would still win even money. It was, in other words, aparticularly 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 toinduce the player to give up all his chips one way or another. Balot just couldn't quite work out howyet.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 tothrow her money down the drain. It was just after the fifteen-hand mark, and she was already down bywell over seventy thousand dollars.Despite this, the woman showed no sign of worrying about where her next chips were coming from. Itwas as if she had a bank of chips on hand that she could draw from without limit whenever hers neededreplenishing.Then Balot had her epiphany.The woman did have a bank of chips at hand. A bank that guarded the chips carefully, sometimes evenincreasing the available number, ever so steadily.The woman hit on a thirteen, drawing a 10. Bust. Bad luck, plain and simpleit was the right move,nothing wrong about her style of play.But the number of chips she had riding on just that one handnow, that was something else. Thedealer raked in well over a thousand dollars fromher.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 turnany 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.He had given his permission.The woman grabbed a pile of chips with her chubby fingers. Where from? The old man's basket ofchips, of course.I seeBalot snarced Oeufcoque, almost unthinkingly.So that's how she does it. I did wonder how she was able to bet so much without worrying.Ah, so you've realized what was bankrolling her bankroll?Is that whyyou chose the old man to leave the table first?Naturally.No fair!She felt Oeufcoque chuckling somewhere at the back of her hand.Balot had got it all wrong. At first she thought that the old man was being paraded about by theyounger lady, the helpless gent reliant on the woman's kindness. But that was all an act that he put on forher sake; in reality, she was the one who was utterly dependent on him.Don't be too hard on yourself, Balot. You worked it out for yourself and pretty quickly too. That'simpressiveyou're allowed to give yourself a little pat on the back once in a while, you know,particularly when you deserve it.In other words, the plump lady didn't have any chips of her own. Only those that she was allowed toplay with. The dealer knew this all too wellit would have been one of the first things he worked out.And that's where he was targeting his manipulative inducements.It's funnyI can feel that I'm about to start winning, but I never quite seem to get there thewoman grumbled.The dealer consoled her with platitudes. Perhaps we haven't quite served enough time at the game forthe cards to start taking a liking to us yet, madam?What do you think I need to do in order to start winning more?My best advice is to try out a number of different things for yourself, all the while taking advice froma player who knows the game well, replied the dealer.On the surface the scene seemed straightforwarda case of the dealer gently flattering his twocustomers. This was only the tip of the iceberg, though; much more was going on under the surface.The dealer is appealing to the old man's sense of chivalry. He's being set up as the white knightin shining armor, with the woman being set up as the damsel in distress.This was Oeufcoque's analysis of the scene as it played out.The dealer didn't really have to do much to make things go his way. The old man already feltchivalrous, and the woman has long suf ered from damsel-in-distress syndrome. There were plenty ofopportunities for the dealer to hand them the poisoned apple.But the old man's been contradicting the dealer!That's all part of the dealer's planWhat do you mean?The dealer's deliberately been feeding him half-mistakes, getting the old man to correct him. Indoing so, the words are coming out of the old man's mouth. It's much easier to get him to actaccordingly. After all, if the old man is the one saying the words, he's hardly going to expect thatthey've been planted in his mouth. He thinks he's acting of his own free will, but really he's at thedealer's beck and call.Balot's head started to spin. She couldn't help but be impressed at how meticulously the dealer hadplanned the whole situation.Not only that, to look at him you wouldn't have the slightest inkling that he was being so manipulative.Ingenious.Now then, back to our little game. Let's see how it's progressing.Oeufcoque was talking about the game where they guessed who would leave the table first, of course,not the card game.I still think it'll be the woman.Balot stuck to her guns. The old man might have been passing on some of his chips to the woman, buthe showed no sign of running out anytime soon. And if the old man's pride was indeed the key to thedealer's success in manipulating him, well, wouldn't that very same pride ensure that he wouldn't run outof chips in the near future?Before long the game was overthe red marker card appeared again, just at a point when the dealerhad bust. There was a pause. Just as Balot thought, the old man still had his large pile of chips intact.Hmm, couldn't quite increase my pile as quickly as I would have liked, said the old man, apparentlyout of nowhere. As he did so he called over one of the attendants to have himfetch his hat and coat. It wasall Balot could do not to show her disbelief on her face.The old man rose. He did have plenty of chips left, of course. Butincredibly, to Balothe passedthem all over to the lady. Grinning, the lady took hold of them all. The old man was telling the wholetable, in deed and in word, that he'd had his fill of fun for the day. Then he sauntered over to the bar.The inevitable conclusion for a proud player. He knows himself well enough, including his ownlimits. Rather than tire himself out, carry on past the point of his concentration, and start losing, he'drather quit while he's ahead. He presents his lady with her bounty, the spoils of his conquest, thenwithdraws while the going is still good, his head held high.Balot was stunned. She hadn't even considered the old man's psychology, his inner workings. It wasonly now that Oeufcoque pointed all this out that she started to wonder how the old man had come to bewith the lady in the first placewhat he offered her and what he sought fromher in return.So, how did you enjoy our little game?Not much. I didn't win either time.Still, it's fulfilled its objective.Objective?You were talking to me, focusing on our little side bet, which meant that your mind was taken ofthe dealer's wiles. I was concerned that he might have left a powerful impression on you otherwiseone that might have distracted you from our ultimate goal.Balot had had an inkling all along that this was what Oeufcoque had been doing, but now that he hadconfirmed it to her so bluntly she wasn't really sure what to say to him. As she searched for the words,Oeufcoque continued in a somewhat mischievous tone.You see, when it comes to influencing you, I've got a massive advantage over the dealer. Hedoesn't have any way of speaking to you directly, after all.Balot's brow wrinkled ever so slightly at Oeufcoque's tactlessness.There's no need to tease me about it.The thing is, now that you know how this sort of manipulation works, you're going to be on thelookout for it. It's going to be much easier for you to resist. Not only that, if you play your cards rightmetaphorically as well as literallythen you'll be able to turn the tables, work out exactly what thedealer is trying to do, and use it to manipulate him.Oeufcoque casually added a throwaway remark:Because neither the Doctor nor I would be able to manipulate the dealer in the way that we'llneed to in order to win big.This wasn't a question of impressions or influence or manipulation anymore. Neither was it a matterof whether what they were doing was right or wrongit wasn't a big deal, in the grander scheme ofthings. The only really important question now was this: was Balot up to the task?I want to believe you, Oeufcoque. Both you and the Doctor. Is that a bad thing? Am I beingmanipulated?That's a judgment call for you to make, after you've honed your own decision-making faculties.All I can say is that this is the path that you've chosen in order to try and solve your case.But I don't think I can win on my own!You won't have to. One of our chief tasks is to be here to support you. And it's your free will, yourchoice, that determines exactly how, and if, you want to use us. Whether you want to use the plan thatwe suggest.Are you trying to influence me right now? Manipulate me into acting the wayyou want me to?Yes, I am. I want you to use me. To let me prove my usefulness.Oeufcoque answered without a moment's hesitation. He continued, I'm a Living Unit. A tool.Balot's eyes narrowed.My pride is not that dif erent from the sort of pride that old man had. I can define my own sense ofself-worthmy usefulnessonly in terms of how my actions af ect other people. I may have my ownvalues, but I need to constantly put them to the test, to see if they have any value in relation to otherpeople, the real world.But I do want to use you. Becausebecause you make me feel like I could do things for myself,even without you.As far as Balot was concerned, this was the ultimate usefulness that Oeufcoque could provide for her.Oeufcoque never tried to dominate people in body or in mind. He always did his utmost to treat them asequals.I want to use you properly. I never want to betrayyou again.Thanks, Balot.Oeufcoque's words rose once more in her hand.Looks like I've ended up with a good partner.04The dealer finished shuffling and the Doctor placed the red marker into the cards.I'm going to display a running point tally.Oeufcoque's instructions couldn't have been more decisive.We're ramping the plan up to the next stage. We need to let the Doctor know.Balot placed her chips down and casually tapped the table with her fingertips.The Doctor picked up on this immediately. As would anyone steeped in his current adopted persona ofthe aging playboy.Can't wait for the next set of cards, eh?Yes, Uncle. It's starting to get reallyinteresting. I'm going to trysuper hard from now on.The Doctor's expression was that of a man thoroughly intoxicated by his surroundings. You had tolook very closely indeed to notice that his eyes were still steely and clear.That's quite a statement, young lady! Your uncle's most proud of you.The Doctor's act was as convincing as everthe indulgent uncle watching benevolently over hispromising young charge.Everyone could now see that Balot was concentrating terribly hard on the game. As if she were tryingher damnedest to win. Nothing unusual about that, of course. Most people who sat down at this table feltthe same way. The only difference was that most people weren't working toward a plan that would helpthem win with absolute certainty. Even Balot didn't understand the full implications of what it meant tohave such a plan in place.The players had all placed their chips on the table, and just as the hand was about to commence, awhole new set of figures floated up on Balot's hand.Do you know how to read this point system?Balot sensed that her whole left hand was now wrapped in a list of numbers. The current point tallyand the breakdown of the cards. Each point total had a corresponding minimumand maximumbet.No problem. I can work it out.Balot absorbed the data in the table deftly. Basically, the higher the point tally the more chips you beton a particular hand, and the lower the points the less you bet. A rudimentary card-counting system calledthe ace-five count.The principles were that the ace was the most advantageous card for the player, and the 5 was the bestcard for the house. The other cards were also ranked, in varying degrees, according to how advantageousthey were for either the player or the house. So, whenever an ace was drawn, you subtracted two points,and whenever a 5 was drawn you added two points. Any card between 2 and 6 other than 5 gave youone point. The 7, 8, and 9 were neutral. Any card worth ten meant you subtracted a point. And so youcame up with an overall point tally. Every time the tally moved past a certain milestone, you changed theamount you bet on a single hand. Ten points and above, between five and ten points, fewer than five,between zero and minus five, lower than minus five; each point tally was allocated a different bettingincrement.This rudimentary card-counting system was entirely compatible with the playing system they alreadyhad in place; the bankroll management systemon Balot's right hand would now also serve to keep track oftheir profits and losses according to the new card-counting system. Whereas previously they had beenmore or less reliant on luck in order to win, now they were going to be able to take the game to the casino.Balot placed three hundred dollars on the table.Right at that moment, taking into consideration all the cards that were on the table, the point tally wasplus two.The cards in front of Balot were 8 and 6, bringing her total to fourteen.The dealer's upcard was 9. The correct tactic, according to the grid, was to hit.The lady had sixteen but fought on, resolute, with a hit. She drew a 2, bringing her total to eighteen.The point tally on Balot's hand shifted as an extra point was addedthe total was now plus three.The Doctor drew a 4 on thirteen, taking his total to seventeen. The point tally changed to plus four.Balot hit, drew a 6, and was now at twenty. Stay, obviously. Point tally: plus five.The dealer flipped over his hidden card. A 9. The point tally remained unchanged.The dealer's total was eighteenBalot and the lady were the winners this hand.The cards on the table were moved to the discard pile, and Balot picked up her chips. Now the pointtally became meaningful. Plus five. In accordance with the new tally, Balot increased her bet from threehundred to six hundred dollars.Balot's cards were 6 and 7, total thirteen. The lady and theDoctor both had small cards, 6 or less. The dealer's upcard was 6.The woman and the Doctor both drew steadily until they bust. Balot played in accordance with thetactical grid on her hand and stayed. The dealer revealed a 2, then drew another card in accordance withthe rules, a 4. He drew again, a 5 this time, bringing his total to seventeen.Balot had lost. The player had been at the disadvantage in this hand due to the run of small cards. Atthis point, Balot had to grin and bear it, in hope of a better future. For the point tally had now increased toplus eight. Patience was, in this instance, a virtue that was going to reap its reward before too long.Balot put forward another six hundred dollars' worth of chips as her stake for her next hand, just as thepoint tally demanded. She was waiting for her opportunity. Suddenly she realized that the dealer waslooking at her. Without a moment's hesitation, the Doctor chimed in with his two cents' worth.That's right, good, good. Where's the fun in betting in drips and drabs all the time?Balot raised her head a little and leaned to one side.You were the one who said that this was a game of endurance, UncleSure, sure. But there's no point in enduring needlessly, just for the sake of it. You'll just end up fit toburst with all the stress that builds up. No need to hold back herelet it all out!The Doctor's cover story had its desired effect of drawing some of the dealer's attention away fromBalot.The Doctor had sixteen, and hit. The card was a 3. Stay.It occurred to Balot for the first time that the Doctor wasn't doing too badly, considering that he didn'thave Oeufcoque to help himout, and he had managed to hold on to his chips and more.His bankroll, tactics, and chip stats must have been firmly there, inside his head, the Doctor computingfuriously behind his facade.Balot hit on her sixteen, just like the Doctor, but she drew an 8 and bust.Her six hundred dollar stake disappeared along with the cards.That seemed to do the trickthe dealer appeared to take his eyes off Balot.He wouldn't have imagined in a million years that she was actually card counting. But as soon asanyone showed the slightest signs of playing like they might be doing so, the dealer was programmed tohone in on them, just in case. Proof that he was, indeed, a first-class dealer.The point tally hovered around the plus five mark for some time. At one point it reached plus nine, buta number of minus cards followed in quick succession. Balot started to feel a little worriedwhat if thecards continued in this way, never showing a decisive opening? But all she could do was sit there andplay the hands that she was dealt.Then, just as they started getting into the game, something happened. The woman won bigwell, ithad been bound to happen sometime, probablyand drew a blackjack on a stake well in excess of athousand dollars. The dealer congratulated herconspicuouslyand at the same time consoled theDoctor, who had bust, the dealer suggesting that he was so close.That's the way the game goes, I'm afraid, sir. Whenever someone wins big, there's always going tobe someone next to them who loses. On the other hand, the opposite is also true, so that's something youhave to look forward to.In response, the Doctor turned away from the lady and toward Balot. It's not as if we're going tokeep on losing forever. If we need to pay our dues before Lady Luck finally decides to smile on us then sobe itlet's not begrudge her.So saying, the Doctor bet on the next hand. Big.Balot snarced Oeufcoque.Did the Doctor do all that deliberately?Of course. He waited until the dealer honed in on his target and pounced. He's playing the dealerin return, turning the dealer's tricks back on him. This idea that when one player loses, the otherinevitably wins. What the dealer is trying to do is to get the Doctor to bet big once the woman startslosing. The woman is caught in the dealer's snare right now, and the dealer is going to move straighton to the Doctor once the woman's sucked dry. He's leaving you till last.Leaving her till last. The very thought brought up nauseating memories for Balot. The idea that shewas dessert, something to be savored at the end of everything. She remembered how one of her customersback in the old days told her that her name made her sound deliciousSomething inside Balot stirred. Something ruthless. So, you want to leave me to enjoy at the end, doyou? Well, I'll be waiting for you, smiling sweetly. I'll be a juicy, ripe apple, ever so inviting, right upuntil the moment you bite into me and discover the razor blade waiting for you insideThese thoughts spun around in Balot's head as she assiduously tracked the ebb and flow of the pointtally. A casual onlooker wouldn't have been able to spot any rhyme or reason in the fluctuations ofBalot's betting patterns, and neither could the lady, who commented, What a fickle little thing you are,my dear, flitting fromone thing to another. I remember a time when I myself was like that, onceWhether it was because she had just won a big payout, or whether it was her natural high spirits, thelady seemed in exceedingly good humor. Balot nodded meekly, as if to acknowledge that she was indeedfeeling adventurous, wanting to try out all sorts of different things. The lady nodded backgood for you.Her large hands grabbed an even larger handful of chips, and she poured themout onto the table.I wonder if luck is flowing my way yet? I can feel something big about to burst The lady's chipsmight as well have been large hunks of bloody meat that she was throwing to the piranhas that were thecards.Far fromsatisfying their hunger, though, all she was doing was whetting their appetite.She was right about one thing, thoughsomething big was coming. Balot felt it too. Something frombeyond the point tally. Balot tried to pin down this indefinable something of a feeling.It wasn't a feeling exactly like the one she had when firing a gun, nor was it like what she felt whenshe was in hot pursuit of the roulette ball. It was familiar and strange all at the same time, as if there weresome sort of pattern, something she was intimately familiar with, except that the stages were all mixedup. She couldn't quite work out what it was she was trying find; it seemed to ebb and flow, appear anddisappear. How to nail it? She thought deep and hard.By the time they had entered the middle stages of the game, the point tally had increased substantially.Fromplus five to plus eight, then plus eight to plus eleven.Got it! It was the moment the point tally had moved fromplus eleven to plus thirteen.For the first time since the game had started, Balot acted as if she were emulating the lady, piling upher chips in a huge, haphazard stack and shoving themonto the board all at once.The lady noticed and looked at her. So did the dealer. Balot was riding the crest of the wave. Thesmall cards had drawn the wave out, and now the surfing conditions were ideal for the player.The cards were dealt. Balot received a 9and another 9. Her attention immediately turned to theupcard: 7. It was a close call, but she had to go for it.The lady hit on fifteen and bust. The Doctor had thirteen and also hit, and also bust.Balot touched the cards with her hands for the first time since she sat had down at the table.Split, please.She used her index fingers on either hand to draw the two cards apart, left and right. Then she placedanother pile of chips, equal to her original pile, next to one of the cards. She wasn't so much concernedabout what individual cards would come next as what the pattern was.The dealer drew her new cards. A jack for the card on her right.Stay.Then, in perfect timing with her breathing, an ace for her left hand. Now she had a total of nineteen forher right hand, twenty for her left. Everyone at the table now expected Balot to win.Stay.Balot watched carefully as the dealer turned his hidden card over. She felt the wave ebbing andflowing. Her head grew hazy, her muscles rigid.The dealer revealed an 8. Total fifteen. This too was part of the overall patternand, as the dealerwas now obliged to draw another card, the wave wasn't over yet.Balot closed her eyes. What's the most important thing now? she thought.She wondered whether she should ask Oeufcoque for advice, but that thought was abruptly checked.The answer had been revealed to her as she opened her eyes.The dealer had drawn a 6. Total twenty-oneBalot's hands had both snatched defeat from the jaws ofvictory. Her chips disappeared, her cards disappeared. But Balot wasn't even watching anymore. Itwasn't as if she had anything to learn from this hand. Yet all had become clear. That was all thatmattered. She felt the pattern coming together in intricate detail. It was as if the individual hands wereminiatures, microcosms for the game as a whole.And it wasn't possible to ignore the miniatures, to skip over the hands as if they somehow obliteratedthe hands that came before them. They were all interconnected.The lossesand the winningswould always remain, after allThe dealer said something to Balot. Consoling her, perhaps. Then he carried on dealing the cards. Nomore inducements necessary here, his manner said. My work on this one is well and truly done.The point tally moved fromplus six to plus ten, up to plus fourteen, then back down to plus twelve.Then Balot felt it again. Like a shadow in the distance, she could just sense its contours taking shape.Balot checked what the maximum amount was she was allowed to bet, according to Oeufcoque'sbankroll management system. Then she bet the maximum amount. The basic unit was three hundreddollars, so the upper limit was ten times that, three thousand dollars. She piled a number of chips togetherso that she held this total in her hand, then laid it on the table.The lady flinched visibly. The dealer, by contrast, showed no outward sign of interestas was onlyappropriate for a dealer of his rank and training.The Doctor whistled appreciatively, and Balot awaited her next hand from behind her three thousanddollar fortress.The lady and the Doctor were each dealt a 10. The point tally moved fromplus twelve to plus ten.Balot was dealt a 5. This added two points to the tally, bringing it back up to plus twelve.The point tally continued to rise as she waited for her second card.Balot's second card was finally dealt: another 5.The point tally stood at plus seventeen, and the dealer's upcard was a 2.The lady hit, drew an 8, bust.The Doctor hit. He had a sixteen, drew a 2, and chose to stay.The point tally was now plus nineteenthe highest it had been since Balot had started counting thecards. Balot's cards were 5 and 5, a total of ten.The dealer turned to Balot. Balot called.Double down.The dealer's eyes narrowed. The lady was stunned. Balot was in fact playing by the bookit was theonly sensible move, given her hand and that of the dealer's. Still, the amount at stake was far above herprevious hands Balot struggled for a moment and had to force herself to physically pile the chips up.The dealer stared at the pile now on the table in front of Balotsix thousand dollars' worth of chips.Staked it out, like a hunter his quarry. Mouth watering at the prospect of the sweet, sweet flesh that wasbeing served up to him on a plate. His hand slid over to the card shoe. No sign of foul playhe didn'tappear to be dishing out a pre-prepared dud card fromthe bottomof the deck.The card came. For the first time since the game began, Balot actually noticed the suit of the card. Itwas the queen of clubs. It took her total up to twenty. This was the razor blade hidden inside the sweetflesh of the fruitStay.Without further ado the dealer flipped his own card over. Ace of clubs. With his existing 2, thedealer's total was now thirteen.He hit again, as prescribed by the rules. It was a 10. The ace in his hand would now be counted as asoft card, its value falling fromeleven to one in order to prevent the dealer fromgoing bust. His total nowchanged to a soft thirteen.The dealer's fourth card would prove decisive.The one-eyed jack. Balot sighed a deep sigh of relief, looking at the profile of the face on the cardthe black jack, who pushed the dealer over the edge and caused himto bust.Balot had gone with the flow. It was the only choice she could have made, really. And yet all it wouldhave taken was for the cards to have shifted slightly, one way or another, and she would have beenbeaten.As it was, she'd won.Wow! What a hand! Is my little niece secretly a magician or something? The Doctor made a greatfuss over Balot's victorythe perfect smokescreen.Balot lifted her head toward him.I just thought that my luck was about to turn, Uncle. Just like the nice lady over there said. Iwas a little scared, though!Balot did everything she could to imitate the mannerisms of the lady, and indeed this served perfectlyto throw the dealer off the scent. After all, hadn't he just influenced the lady to play recklessly? The ladywas even more impressed when the dealer pushed over the two piles of six thousand dollars towardBalot: the original stake and the winnings. The lady was caught up in the moment completely now andpractically threw her next lot of chips at the table. She was betting in increments of a thousand dollars at atime. And if she truly thought that her moment had come, that victory was just around the cornerwell,who knew how much she would start betting? One thing was for sure, though: the dealer was on his wayto find out. He had her wrapped around his little finger and insinuated himself further and further into hermind, consoling her when she lost, praising her on the increasingly rare occasions that she won, all thewhile dishing out his advice.The dealer said, Lady Luck seems to be playing a fickle game tonight, madam. I have a feeling thatthe person who invests the most in their cards is likely to come out on top in the end.The dealer said, Everyone wants to be in a good position to take advantage of their lucky streak whenit comes. Be sure not to let yours slip fromyour fingers.The dealer said, Victory is such a subjective concept. Everyone should set their own definition ofvictory,' and aimalways for that.The lady, in turn, would throw back questions at the dealer, only to have them answered in thedealer's smooth, inimitable way.Do you think I'mplaying in a way that's keeping my lucky streak at bay?It's difficult to say, madam, as only you know for sure exactly how far away you are from being ableto ride your own lucky streak. It's like being with a loveronly you can know how close you really areto them.Ah, yes. Like when you only realize your true feelings for them after you've left them and the momenthas passed.Exactly, madam. And, forgive me for saying so, but it seems that as a woman of the world, you'reexperienced enough to know your own feelings.Even as the dealer was replying, the lady had another fistful of chips in her chubby hands, ready tocontinue.He's not bad.Oeufcoque's tone of voice was that of a professional athlete praising the winner at a junior sports day.He's got natural talent, I'll give him that. He smells as if it's the most obvious thing in the worldthat he's able to manipulate people.You mean through the double bind and preying on people's breathing patterns?Yes, that, but other techniques too. He knows what he's doing, all right.Other techniques?His choice of words. Tonight, in the end, that sort of thing. It's distracting her completelyfrom her bankroll. Classic misdirection. What it comes down to, though, is that he's using any meanspossible to get her to bet more and more of her chips. His metaphor of a lover was a good one. Sheswallowed it hook, line, and sinkerthe idea that the only way she'll get the chips back is if she putsoutYes, I can believe that about herIt could even be that she's experienced just the reverse of that in real life and is nowsubconsciously trying to put something right the second time around. The dealer is proving anaf irmation of that, making her relax her grip on her chips. A simple type of manipulation, but ef ectivenonetheless.So you're saying that the dealer is good with words, and that's why he's winning?Words, yes, but that's only one part of the picture. What he's doing is selling a dream, a fantasy.He's taking what's in their minds and encouraging them to try and turn it into reality.Before too long the lady did manage to win big on a hand. For a moment, her fantasy had beenfulfilled. She won $7,500, but more importantly she was now in a trance, almost an ecstatic state. As ifthe lover that she had reluctantly parted company with when he hadn't two cents to rub together had nowreturned to her as a multi-millionaire and conquering hero.As the game entered its final stages, the old man who had been playing until recently returned to standbehind the lady and watch her play.It was almost as if the old man had placed the lady there so that she could lose. His pride was animmovable boulder on this point; when he wasn't there to support her, she was helpless. This was how itwas, and how it should be.Jack Sprat could eat no fat, his wife could eat no leanand so betwixt the two of them they lickedthe platter clean.This was the sort of couple they were.The red marker appeared and the round came to a close. The woman staggered to her feet. Her facelooked thoroughly satiated.She was spent.A good evening to you all, she bid them.The Doctor replied in kind, Good evening, madam. I guess we two will have to be the last ones here,with only the cards to keep us company.The lady smiled, still in high spirits. I'm afraid I'm through for the night. Though I'm sure the cardswill keep calling me backI do love themso.Cards probably weren't the only things that she loved, of course.Balot politely bid the lady good night and turned her attention to the tables on her left hand.The lady had lost well in excess of a hundred thousand dollars. As she had been destined to do fromthe start.Balot wiped the lady's data from her hand in order to make way for information that would be moreuseful at this stage.Well, well. It looks like it's just us now. But we're still good to enjoy a game with you, right,Marlowe? The Doctor spoke to the dealer as if he were an old friend, not someone he had just met forthe first time a short while ago.Of course, sir. I wouldn't have it any other way. The dealer was as friendly as ever with his banter,but as he shuffled in preparation for the next round, he glanced at his wristwatch. How long would heneed to serve these two up on a plate? Then he turned back to look at Balot and the Doctor. Oeufcoquewould have picked up instantly on the look of deep greeddesire, eventhat twinkled at the back of thedealer's eyes. Balot noticed it too.Balot focused on sensing what the dealer was trying to do with the shuffle. His fingers were movingsmoothly, deliberately, creating intricate patterns. Patterns that represented the dealer's will, as hemanipulated the rules, stacking the odds in his favor. This must have been the intangible sense of uneasethat Balot had felt ever since sitting down at the table.I can feel it, Oeufcoque.Feel what?This dealer isn't just shuffling the cards.You mean he's manipulating their order?He's changing the way he shuffles them according to which customer he's targeting.I doubt that even he could memorize the entire contents of the card shoe, though.Maybe not. But he is at least thinking about the patterns of play, I'm sure of it.You think you know what the dealer's plan is?Prettysure.Really?Oeufcoque's reply came from within the glove. He seemed impressedamazed, even. Balot noddedin confirmation, then realized that she had done so in reality, not just in her heart. Hurriedly she made ashaking movement with her head to cover it up, and it seemed that she succeeded. She continued herconversation with Oeufcoque, more carefully this time.Not in terms of exact facts and figures like you, of course. Just in a general sense.Enough to put it to use to your advantage?I just tried it out back then. I was right half the time. With a bit more practice, I think I'll geteven better.Right, then. I'll do what I can with the numbers and the dealer's odor. You use your senses. We'lluse our combined skills to ramp things up and move on to the next stage. Are you ready?For a moment Balot thought she could hear Oeufcoque's growly laughter.Laughter that suggested a hint of mischiefbut laughter that she could rely on.Balot nodded. Firmly inside her heart, this time.The dealer had finished shuffling and had stacked the mountain of cards into a neat pile. He turned toBalot. For a second she had no idea what he wanted, and then it dawned on her: the red marker was heldtoward her, neatly, for her to take.For the second time since taking her seat at the table, Balot received the transparent red card for her toplace in the deck as she pleased.She focused her attention on the pile of cards and felt a certain something that seemed to emanate fromone point. She slipped the marker right in at that exact place.The dealer cut the cards one last time, smoothly as ever, then placed the cards in the card shoe. Balotfelt the movement ever so keenly; it was as if she had set off a little ripple that could now spread outacross the whole pattern, and more importantly, the dealer responded to that rippleto its influencewhen he cut the cards.We're taking our system through to the end, it looks like. Best tell the Doctor that we're movinginto the final stage.Balot squeezed back at the words as they emerged in her hand. Af irmative.Uncle, I have a feeling that I'm going to win big this time. My lucky streak is about to arrive,I'm sure of it.Dear, dear, and the game's hardly even begun The Doctor wrung his hands, skillful as ever in hisportrayal of the part of the indulgent uncle who was now gently exasperated at his young charge'simpatience. He looked like he was surrendering.His eyes, though, told a different story as he caught Balot's own eyes for an instant. Then they wentback behind the smokescreen.Well, then, we'll have to get serious! Let's see who can win the mostyou or me!That was the cue for themboth to bring their chips to the table.The dealer smiled and checked their chips before dealing out the cards with the utmost care.The game had begun. The game that Balot was going to win.05I'm now going to display the true count.The display on Balot's left hand transfigured again. Another level of detail had been added. Morenumbers, the fluctuations in the count. In terms of the quantity of displays, there was now actually slightlyless to take inthe other players' data was no longer therebut the numbers that remained were now ofanother order of complexity, far beyond the computational power of the average person.The point tally was no longer a simplistic one or two points at a time, either.A 9 was now minus one, a 10 worth minus three and an ace minus four. The other numbers, too, wereassigned values between plus and minus four. The resulting tally would then be used as a coefficient toother factors, namely the number of cards already played compared to the number left. The result of thesecalculations would in turn produce the ultimate optimized betting strategy.In particular, the most important new development was that they were now keeping track of everysingle card that was played in the course of a round.This was the one and only way to achieve their aim: absolute victory.They would memorize all the cards that had appeared so that they could work out with mathematicalcertainty their odds of winning. Hence the true count.There were six decks of cards in play in total, or 312 cards. Of those, thirty-odd would be excludedfrom a round because they would come below the red marker. The remaining 280 or so could bememorized, though, and if done properly the true count would be able to pinpoint the precise momentwhen the odds were most in Balot's favorthe moment to strike.This was what Balot and the Doctor had been waiting for all along, and it was the reason they hadbeen playing the waiting game.Sooner or later the moment will definitely come. The right moment to bet everything on a singlehand. Until then you need to preserve your bankroll at all costs.Balot squeezed her hand againroger that.She turned to the Doctor.Come on, Uncle! Your turn!Sure, sureNo fair! Just because the other players have gone doesn't mean you can dawdle around andhold up the game, you know!She knocked the Doctor's arm as if to hurry him along. Really, though, she was thinking that they'dmanaged that well. In order to win through card counting they needed to get through the earlier hands asquickly as possible in order to get to the good stuff. The Doctor's dallying was the perfect smokescreenno one who was deliberately taking their time was likely to be a card counter.The Doctor raised his head and hit. He drew a 3 on fifteen, total eighteen.The Doctor called stay, and exhaled deeply, as if he'd struggled to make the decision.Balot hit on sixteen. The dealer flipped her card over: 8.The dealer's upcard was a 9. It wasn't the wrong decision for Balot to have hither move wastactically sound. It just didn't help her very much; the result was that she bust, plain and simple. The cardsand chips were collected, and Balot was about to take her eyes off them when Oeufcoque gave her anunusual instruction.Keep your eyes glued to your losing hand.Balot did so, staring at the discard pile where her cards now rested.The dealer turned his hidden card over: 9 and 8, which made seventeenthe Doctor won the hand.Try and make out that you're somehow winning.Even though I'm obviously not?Yes. As if you can't bear losing, so you're changing the rules in your own mind so that you'resomehow winning.Not the easiest request in the world, and Balot had to give some thought as to how she was going to dothis. But then the Doctor fed her a lifeline, almost as if he had read her mind.There you are, you see? Less haste, more speed. Sometimes you do need to think about it in order topull off a good win!Whatever. Myscore was higher than yours, anyway.What are you talking about?I had twenty-four. You only had eighteen, Uncle.Balot had no idea how she'd come up with this or where she was going with it. Judging by theirreactions, neither did the dealer, or indeed the Doctor.Ermyou do understand the rules, don't you, my dear? That's not quite how the game is played.The Doctor peered over at her, somewhat nonplussed.It's mymoney, I can play how I like!Balot tried to sound as plausibly petulant as she could. The Doctor looked over at her indulgently,turning to the dealer as he dealt the cards. I'll humor the child, he seemed to say.The dealer continued to deal, his expression as serious as ever.Suddenly Balot felt somewhat embarrassed. Instinctively she turned to Oeufcoque to see if she haddone something wrong.Was there a point to that?Of course.What, then?To manipulate the dealer.How?We show him just what a mysterious creature woman is.That didn't really satisfy Balotshe still wanted to know howbut then it was her turn.Balot hit on thirteen and bust. The card that should have helped her as a player was now sticking itsoar in, getting in her way. Don't rely on the cards to help you out, even the good ones. The key toplaying a steady game was never to hope for too much. Unless you expected fully to lose at any momentand could cultivate that sense of detachment, you were doomed to be led around by the nose. She had beentaught this by the Doctor prematch, and she ruminated deeply on its meaning. Suddenly it came to her: wasthis what Oeufcoque wanted?I'm supposed to try and confuse him? The dealer?Exactly. I'll tell you when and how. Be as innocent as you can. Oeufcoque spoke as if he werecasually ordering her to shoot himwith a gun that she held in her hand.Balot realized the enormity of what Oeufcoque was asking of her.The cards came. A queen and 6, making sixteen. The dealer's upcard was a 10. The odds of winning atthis point were severely stacked against her. The chips that she had placedthe chips she should haveplacedwere added to the tables on her hands, chalked up as additional losses. This was costing herdearly. But was she gaining something valuable in return?Certainly Oeufcoque seemed to think sohe seemed totally unconcerned by what was actually on thecards. Indeed, he actually asked Balot:What sort of cards did you get?Oeufcoque should have known this for himself, of course, but Balot snarced the full images of thecards directly to Oeufcoque, giving himan accurate facsimile of what she saw.I was actually asking for your impression of the cards, your gut reaction. Like what you wroteabout the fossils in your personal dictionary.Balot's mind went back to the time they were in the caf together, way back before the trial.The pictures are pretty. I like the black queen. The six of diamonds seems like an accessoryforher to wear.I want you to tell the Doctor what you've just told me.Is that all? Anything else?If you can think of anything else good to say then go for it, sure.The Doctor hit, and though it was a close call he was still in the game. It was Balot's turn.Balot nudged the Doctor.Hey, Uncle? Don't you think the picture on this card here is reallycute?The Doctor leaned over to inspect the queen in detail, almost as if Balot had drawn the picture on itherself. I see what you're talking about. Just your sort of thing, isn't it?It goes really well with the other card. I'm not sure I want to change it.I see. I think you're right.I thought so.Then Oeufcoque cued her at exactly the right moment.StillStillI'd like to hit.The dealer was completely unprepared for this. He hadn't spent years training for nothing, though, andhe was ready with the next card, smooth as ever.It was a 5. Her total was twenty-one. Was this the something valuable she was getting in return for herpatience? The small card that was normally so advantageous to the house had now saved the player.This was the pattern she had readit was all coming together. But before she had time to react,Oeufcoque gave Balot her next instructions.Look at the pictures and show that you're unsatisfied with the card you've just been given. As ifthe drawings on the cards are all that matter.Balot scowled conspicuously and pointed toward the new card as if it were an unwelcome interloper.What a shame! I didn't think this would happen, Uncle. The pictures are all out of whackthey don't match at all!Do you know what? I think you're right about what you said earlier about not changing the pattern.You really do show talent as a budding artist.I like to think so, Uncle.The two of them prattled on, a truly inane conversation. Pointless. But the dealer tried to find whatmeaning he could in it. He looked fromone face to another, trying to break down the illusion.Balot popped her head up.Stay.Obviously. She hardly needed to say it, yet the dealer reacted as if he was momentarily surprised byBalot's decision. He nodded and flipped over his own card. A face card, value ten. His total was twenty.Balot had won.The dealer paid out Balot's winnings, but she left them to one side, apparently uninteresteddisappointed, evenin her victory. In fact she had won twice over: once because of the hand and againbecause she had successfully thrown the dealer off balance. But she kept this all to herself.From this point onward Balot said whatever came to her mind as the cards were dealt, anything to putthe dealer off the scentand draw himfurther in at the same time.Balot said,The cards are like a flock of birds in flight. I want to help them fly awayto freedom.Balot said,The cards seem a little jagged at the corners. I hope I'll be able to smooth out their rough edgesa bit.Balot said,Theyseem a little softbut maybe they're exactlyright just as they are.And then, Still, I'm going to hit. And then, Because of that, I should stay, I think. And then, Even so, I'd like to hit, please.Balot could hardly work out whether she was coming or going herself. Let alone the dealer.The Doctor supported her act as best he could, occasionally turning to the dealer with a face that saidI've no idea what she's going on about either, but let's humor her.The dealer's doing a pretty good job of keeping his cool so far, but even he won't be able to keepit up much longer.Oeufcoque seemed mildly amused by his own mischief. He brought up the true count on Balot's hand,thoroughly and accurately.He thinks he has you worked outwhat sort of personality you are. He has you down as a properlittle spoiled princess, someone who doesn't even have to ask before she gets. So he's working out howto give it to youhis head's full of just how he's going to do that.Balot shrugged her shoulders. She started to appreciate just how powerful a force misdirection was.Basically, this dealer was exceedingly proud of the fact that he could read any customer like a bookor so he thought.In other words, the dealer knew that however irrationally the customer seemed to be acting, there wasalways a reason behind their behavior, whether it was conscious or subconscious.Despite his brave face, though, all the dealer had to go on at this point was the fact that Balot hadsuddenly gone from being more or less mute to a real chatterbox. Balot could feel his breathing rhythmsstart to sway, and even if Oeufcoque hadn't been there to guide her she would have been able to work outexactly when to interject, to prod him, for maximum effect, throwing him further and further off his guardwithout his even realizing it.Looks like clubs are myluckysuit. They're always there for me when I need them the most.The Doctor nodded in agreement, showing he was in full sympathy with his niece's line of thinking.Oh, yes, it's most important to discover your special suit. It's a well-known fact that a particular suit canact as a mirror for your soul.At this point Balot had no clubs in her hand. Only the dealer's upcard was a club.Balot was presumably going to sit tight and wait, hoping for the dealer to bust. But no. The secondafter the Doctor said he would stay,Hit.Balot didn't even leave a hair's breadth before calling out her move. The dealer's reaction wasdelayed again. As if he were doing everything he could to force himself not to ask her to repeat herselfbecause he hadn't caught it the first time.The card came. A 6 on top of her thirteen. The suit was diamonds.The dealer was staring intently at Balot, trying to work out what was going through her mind.Just as I thought, Uncle!That was all she had to say.The Doctor didn't even seem to be paying attention to Balot's cards at this point; he was, by allappearances, focused intently on his own game. As a result of this further misdirection, the dealer hadeven less to go on.Now Balot would take plenty of time to mull over her next hand before choosing to stay, and thedealer would flip over his hidden card with relief, as if he had finally been permitted his turn. Both hishidden card and his upcard were face cards, and the dealer won that hand. Furthermore, both his cardswere clubs.So close, madamoiselle, my commiserations.Oh, not to worry. My suit just took a little wander over your way, that's all. They'll be back inmy hand before long, and in greater numbers too.Sure enough, that was exactly what happened in the next hand. Not that Balot had any way of planningit exactly like that, of course, but when the 2 of clubs appeared in her hand along with the ace of spades,Balot smiled as if to show her theory had been proven right. The dealer nodded in surprise but thenseemed to accept her theory that clubs were just her suit, and appeared to relax a little. Balot decided tothrow himoff the scent further. She didn't even have to wait for an instruction fromOeufcoque.Then again, looking at this hand it seems that it's spades that are coming to myrescue.Balot said this out loud, deliberately, as the Doctor hesitated over his choice. Then, when it was herturn,Sorryto mess you around, clubs, but I think I'm going to have to hit after all.She drew a face cardclubs.As I thoughtyou did come to myrescue, after all.She hit again, still speaking apparently to herself. This time she received a 5. Hearts.Ah, finally! Thanks for dropping by.Still prattling inanely to herself, she chose to stay.I've always bet on hearts, all along, but I think that this heart is particularly worth betting on.Well, there's a stroke of luck for you, said the Doctor, ever the Doctor, as he stared intently at thedealer's upcard.The dealer had a 5 and 7. He drew a picture card and bust.You know, you're exceptionally gifted at predicting the cards. Your uncle never would have guessedthat one, you know, continued the Doctor.Yeah. The spade seemed to want to stick his oar in, but the heart went well with the club, so Ithought it was worth betting on them to see if it would work out.Hmm, I see. You're having a conversation with the cards, you could say? Talking to them?The dealer handed over her winnings with an expression that seemed to suggest that he'd rather Balotkept her conversation for people and let the cards sort themselves out.The game progressed along similar lines for another few hands, and then Balot had a jack and 10appear in front of her.Balot now put on a triumphant air, pointing at her cards.I was waiting for these! See! I knew myclubs would come crawling back to me before too long.A little too late, though, don't you think, Uncle? I don't really need them anymore.The Doctor just nodded, somewhat carelessly.Balot was the only one to win that hand.She received her winnings but pushed them over to one side, apparently uninterested by the chipsbored by them, almost.She could almost hear the dealer's state of confusion cranking up a notch.At this point the dealer should really have given up on trying to read Balot, taken stock, and justcontinued with a level head; he still had the house edge on his side, after all, and it wasn't as if the househad started losing heavily yet. It wasn't even his own money that he was losing. But the dealer wasdetermined to crack Balot, to work out what she was thinking. His smile remained, but it was growingmore and more strained.Does this person still want to bankrupt me, Oeufcoque?It seems so. Of course, all that's really happening is that he's losing the plot.Whyis he even that bothered? It's just a job for him, isn't it?That's the sort of person he is, no doubt. He needs to be in control. Trouble is, the dealer doesn'treally have any direct influence over his own game. Take away the natural advantage that he has byplaying to the rules and the dealer's not much more than a bystander, after all.I see that.The trouble is, there are some dealers who try and use that natural advantage as a shield,stepping out of line and going over and above the call of duty to try and get more. This dealer is aperfect example of that: he's cold, calculating, and very, very good at parting punters from theirmoney. The corollary of this is that he needs to be in control at all timeshe's the dominating type.And that's something that we can use to our own advantage in so many ways.It wasn't long before the Doctor picked up on the turn of events and pitched in wholeheartedly to theirstrategy of befuddling the dealer. He nodded along at Balot's impenetrable statements and threw back afew of his own for good measure.I must say, I'm most impressed, O niece of mine. It seems like I've created a monster! The Doctorpraised her conspicuously and lavishly, virtually forcing the dealer to follow suit. The dealer wasn't quitesure what he was supposed to be praising, of course. Before long he found himself talking in the mostabstract of terms: most impressive, wonderful, how perceptive of madamoiselle.The game reached its middle stages, and another instruction came fromOeufcoque.Try changing your posture now. When the next hand comes, cross your legs.Balot did as she was told, crossing her legs as soon as her second card was on the table.The dealer shouldn't really have been able to see under the table, of course, but nevertheless heseemed intently focused on her actions.Right, now for the next few hands, try shifting your position constantlyfrom left to right, as ifyou'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, Balotshifted 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 cornerof her field of vision, and declared her intention to stay.The dealer couldn't take his eyes off Balotthey were still glued to her as he flipped his own hiddencard over.The dealer had two 9stotal 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 sothat they can better understand them. We need to make sure that the visual cues we give of areconsistent with thatin other words, we need to look as we're supposed to be feeling.I don't understand at allFor 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 thinkabout something you admire, they fix on a point in the distance somewhat to the left. Oh, there areplenty of individual variations on the theme, of course, but statistically speaking most people tend tohave the same tellsthere's a fixed pattern. Those who are skilled manipulators can trainthemselves to be able to read people by just their eyes and body language, working out theiropponent's thoughts and feelings without them even saying a word.This dealer is checking me out?Of courseit's one of the basic principles of psychological manipulation. As I said, not just eyemovements but also the positioning of your hands and feet, the way your face is turned, the slope ofyour shoulders: all these are supposed to be a map, a diagram to someone's current psychologicalstate.Balot looked at her cards and couldn't help but feel a scowl, even if she didn't show it. Had the dealerreally 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 wayand that. Then sometimes she would confuse him further by refusing to respond at all to the cards, keepingher 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 tuneand he didn't even realizeit.She would smile aimlessly, apropos of nothing, and the dealer would be forced to smile back. Thenshe would go all grumpy, causing the dealer to turn serious, wondering what the matter could be. Beforelong, Balot was sure that if she asked himto 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 handthe Doctor'smoves.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 whatyou 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 himto take advice froma girl. Don't you worry about me. It might look like I'mlosing at the moment, but younever 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 herback. 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 thecustomer down there. Not usually.Starting fromthe 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. Shesnarced the electronic waves, turning themto sound waves inside her head.Balot was stunned by the message. It was a transmission to the observation room. Asking them tocheck 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 wasabout 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. Tosmoke them out of their den. Stay still. You're not doing anything illegal.Yesthis was an accomplished dealer, and they couldn't overlook that fact, even when he wasstarting to fall under their spell. All it took was his intuitiona sixth sense, almostto work out thatsomething underhanded was going on. Still, it was as Oeufcoque said: as long as they weren't caught inthe act, there was nothing the casino could pin on them, however suspicious they were. There were limitsto the dealer's abilities. And there was no way for the casino to tell for sure whether the pair at the tablewere indeed sitting ducks, or whether they were a ticking time bomb, biding their time before going offwith 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 ofthe foot to stay, one to hit. Three when he had to double down. On the rare occasions he was supposed tosplit, Balot was to tug on his sleeve as if to hurry himup.The dealer seemed to be picking up on many of these signals, or so she thought, but then he appearedto lose interest, as if he had been worrying over nothing. Balot's efforts at misdirection had obviouslypaid off.Suddenly it occurred to Balot to inject a bit of life into the proceedings. She wanted to revive thesitcom atmosphere of earlier, get her double act with the Doctor back on the road. She prodded his armplayfully.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 mychips.Well, it's not me you should be asking, then, is it? Ask Mr. Handsome over there on the other side ofthe table.Balot nodded and turned to the dealer to offer hima 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 surethat 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. Pleaseif 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 tosurvive as long as we canOkay, 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 likeThe 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 startbetting big? And yet she was talking about whittling her stake down to a feeble dollar-a-pop! Thedealer's face started to show all thisand 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 gotemotionally attached to cardsall gooey and sentimentalwhether she won or lost, and it wasimpossible to tell what she was being sentimental about. Her conversation was all over the place, butsomehow she managed to come up with all sorts of nonsensical rules and fun and games with her uncle.Worst of all, though, she was winningnot in a big way, he didn't think, but steadily, ominously. Inall 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 overwhelminglyin 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 werecomprehensively in their favor: averaged with the Doctor, the two of themhad managed to win at a rate ofwell 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 shuf le to convert all your chips into tenthousand-dollarpieces.Oeufcoque ordered, and Balot followed. The result was an intimidatingly tall stack of high-valuechips, right in front of her.The dealer touched his earphone again to order replacement chips for the ones he had paid out. Themanager 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.06The 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 wereno longer concerned with keeping up appearances. As a result Balot could read the complex patterns ofthe cards as they flowed left and rightthey 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 ofthe 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 tensincluding the royalsend up at thebottom of the shoe.In that case, we consider those cards discarded from play. Try and get as accurate a reading asyou 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 allthe 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 dealerperformed another cuta stealthy, swift movement, one much too quick for the naked eye to follow. Andindeed Balot didn't follow it, not with her eyes at least. But the Lightite skin that covered her entire bodywas sensitive enough to the sudden movement, and she read it like a book.Thirty-two cards in total. Everysingle one of them worth ten.So he's taken two decks' worth of tens and royals and removed them from play. What a moveOeufcoque seemed simultaneously impressed and blas.The point tally changed, dropping immediately to minus eighty. The value of the optimal stake perhand 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 hadhappened when the dealer last cut the cards. Remembering, feeling which cards surrounded the clumps often 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 ofseventeen, 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 tonineteen, 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 luckchange? 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 thicknessof 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 wrenchingthemfromthe 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 landedon the table distracted the dealer for a moment, causing him to take his eyes from the discard pile. Helooked 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. Bringit on! Throwing caution to the wind he placed a pile of ten-thousand-dollar chips on the table in front ofhim.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 newround, so it was only prudent to start the betting low and increase their stakes only when the cards startedto play in their favor. Balot and the Doctor had been doing their best to cover up the fact that they weredoing just that, but even so the dealer would have surely worked out by now that they always started eachnew 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 hiddencard 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 themnow. Balot tapped the Doctor's armtwice.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, butrather 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 nolonger 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 a10.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 isBalot tapped the Doctor's armagain.Of course said the Doctor, and the dealer's face showed a flash of panic when he saw the Doctortake 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 breathingheavily now and seemed to be in some pain. Still, he managed to deal another card to the Doctor. A 10again. 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'vehad 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 Balotwas 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 getthem all, and here was the surplus, spilling out uncontrollably, just where he didn't want themlike theclubs in poker that nobody seemed to want. Like stray dollar bills sticking out the sides of a hastily closedtrunk.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, andshe re-split again. And so on and so on. It was only when she came to the sixth split that she drew a 7 andfinally stopped.The dealer looked like a bank robber hemmed in by police on all sides. Police with advance notice ofwhen 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 toblow up in his face.The dealer's hidden card was a 10. Bringing the total number of tens on the table up to twenty.The dealer's total was eighteen. Of the ten bullets that Balot and the Doctor fired toward him, onemissed and the other nine landed with deadly accuracy. The dealer was at death's door.The prize is within our grasp now.Oeufcoque's words floated up on Balot's hand as if he were giving her his blessing. Balot was trulythankful to have Oeufcoque silently watching over her.All we need now is a couple more good chances and you should be able to pin it down.By it, Oeufcoque of course meant the thing that they had come to this casino for. The four milliondollarchips. The Doctor's instructions came to mind againthey must steal the yolk without touching thewhite or the shell.The payout came. Between them Balot and the Doctor were looking at over half a million dollars. Theplump lady might have lost big to the house, but in one fell swoop Balot and the Doctor had won almostfive times as much fromthe casino.See, it's like I said. Stop being stingy with your chips, and theystop being stingyto you!Balot grinned cheekily, as if to say that this was only natural.But it's going to be a little tricky now, isn't it, Uncle? With all these chips cluttering up thetable, I mean.Fine, well, once we manage to win a bit more we can exchange our chips for larger denominations.Okay, Uncle! We'll just have to win some more then!Sure. I think that if we could double what we have now then that ought to do it.That bizarre conversation out of the way, Balot gave a convincing show of bracing herself for the nextset of cards. Likewise the Doctor.The dealer stared at the pair of themin shock, as if they had each just grown a pair of wings.Now we need to make sure this dealer stays put at this table.Instructions fromOeufcoque flashed up.We need to convince the house that we're a useful set of customers, ready to be milked for allwe're worth. Otherwise they might switch dealers on us or even ask us to leave the casino.At this point Balot noticed that the dealer was listening to instructions being sent to him through hisearpiece. It seemed that the dealer had asked an attendant for more chips, and that the attendant reportedthis back to the floor manager. The dealer was being subjected to a lecture from an authoritative-soundingvoice.The floor manager's analysis was that the pair at the table were probably ordinary punters, highrollers who had somehow slipped through the net of the casino's usually comprehensive VIP screening.But until their identities could be confirmed for sure, the dealer's orders were to try and contain them.Keep the bets as low as possible, set a house maximum limit, and distract them with prizes and trinketsfree-stay coupons at the hotel, first-class plane tickets, and whatnot. Balot, though, had no intention ofbeing contained by such things. She had to come up with a plan. She thought about what her opponentwanted. How she could act as if she were about to fulfil their needs.Hey, Uncle? Why don't we play a different sort of game now? First to use up all their chips?Balot gave her best impression of a spoiled brat who always got her way, however capricious.Come again?A battle between me and you. First to get rid of all their chips wins.The Doctor was visibly stunned. As was the dealer. That's not, er, what this game is really about,you know? Or rather, I should say that's not how you play at a casino said the Doctor.What about lowball poker, then? When the weakest hand is the winner?Well, sure, but even then, the aimis still to win the chipsBut it's so boring right now!Well, then, if you insist, why don't we go for something like a high-low split? First to either reach thetarget or get rid of all their chips wins? If you manage to beat me I'll buy you whatever you want on theway home.You're on, Uncle! I'm going to thrash you!The conversation had taken such a strange turn that the dealer had to struggle to keep up. But at leastone thing was clear.We've got a pair of easy marks here, sir. Sitting ducks, the dealer whispered into his earpiece in avoice that was inaudible to Balot and the Doctoror rather, would have been inaudible if not for Balot'spowers. Balot understood that she and the Doctor were angels, the answer to all the dealer's prayers, forhe would be able to get what he wanted from themhis marks. Balot felt the last twinges of pity for thisman disappear. If he saw her as no more than a pigeon to be plucked, she'd deliver the same back to him,with interest.Well played.Oeufcoque's words floated up on her hand, and she squeezed back at them as she placed her chips forthe next hand. The Doctor placed his chips too. The dealer never did get around to setting that housemaximum; he was trapped in a quagmire of his own making.This dealer already has one foot in the grave as far as this casino is concerned.Oeufcoque was providing a commentary now.Not only that, it's the foot in the grave bearing his weight at the moment. This dealer is no longeracting like an employee should. He's taking this personally. He's forgotten all his responsibilities andduties as an employee.Indeed, the man in front of Balot, Marlowe John Fever, now had eyes for one thing and one thing only:to bring down Balot and the Doctor, even if it took all the chips in the casino to do it.Right, we're going to divide our strategy into three parts.Oeufcoque had the measure of the dealer now and dictated a new course of play. The bankroll wasdivided into three piles. The tactical grid on Balot's left hand split into three distinct tables, each showingtheir own sets of figures.We'll make tactical adjustments on a hand-by-hand basis.The idea was to divide Balot's chips into three piles and to treat each pile as if it belonged to adifferent player. The first would be the sacrificial victim to pave the way for the other two. The secondwould perform a supporting task, gradually building up something of a bankroll. The third was there todeal the knockout blow when the time was just right.Balot also had to signal the Doctor's moves too, so there were four lines of tactics in play at any giventime.Balot had her hands full. It was true that her newly expanded bankroll gave her some breathing space,but the sort of tactics she was now attempting were far beyond the reach of a normal human being. It wasonly because Oeufcoque was with her that she'd be able to perform the sort of complex calculations thatwere needed to pull it offall without the dealer being able to see through her plan.The game progressed, Balot winning steadily all the while. Just as they entered the final stagesOeufcoque gave another instruction.Time to give the dealer a bit of a jolt, I think. We can't have him get too coolheaded.For this was indeed what had been happening as the game had started to calmdown again.What should I do?The answer to Balot's question was a tough one to swallow.You reallythink I should saysomething like that?I do. The time is ripe.Having received her orders, Balot gauged her timing, and when the moment was right she tapped theDoctor's arm.What is it?Balot left the slightest of pauses before unleashing the words that cut like a knife:I want to play at another table.The Doctor's mouth flew open. But if he was surprised, the dealer looked as if he'd seen a ghostno,as if his whole world were about to collapse around him. This girl, this girl who knew nothing, wasrejecting her own table? When she was on such a winning streak?The Doctor protested, as if he were interceding for the dealer. How come? You're doing so wellhere! It's time to press our advantage! Wasn't it you yourself who said that we needed to be in it to winit?The Doctor, of course, understood Balot's game perfectly. She had been worried for a moment that hemight actually take her literally, thinking she was flaking, and that the Doctor really might get up to leavethe table as she suggested. But he showed no sign of moving.Fine, be like that. I'll just win some more chips at this table, then.The dealer almost choked at the way Balot phrased thisso resentful!The red marker appeared during the next hand. The dealer went bust, and the round was over.The dealer hastily collected the cards. No longer could his hand movements be described as slick andsmoothhis actions were those of a man scrambling to load a revolver. This is what I'm going to use tokill them, his fingertips seemed to say. Balot focused her attention on those fingertips.While she did this, the Doctor engaged the dealer in conversation, playing the part of a punter eager tofill the time before the action could recommence.And the manner in which the Doctor addressed himMarlowe or even Buddy, he called the man,treating himas an equal, like a long-lost friend.Just as he has ever since he sat down at the table, come to think of it.Something clickedand Balot realized exactly why the Doctor was doing this, why the Doctor hadplanned it from the start. It was to treat the dealer as an individual, to distinguish him from the casino. Tostrip away the dealer's attachments, his sense of duty and responsibility toward his employers.The shuffle was over soon enough, and the dealer handed the red marker to Balot.Balot sensed the pile of cards and thrust the red marker toward the blind spotthe place that wouldcause the cards to flow with maximum advantage to the players and maximum disadvantage to the dealer.She did this without the dealer realizing what she was doing.Balot placed the red marker on the pile of cards. Just like that. Not in them, on top of them. It wasalmost as if she were mocking the dealer, making fun of the whole process. In reality though, there wasmore to her actions than mere mockery.The dealer's hands wavered in midair. He did his best to pull the situation back, to proceed on to thecut as smoothly as possible. His actions may have looked convincing enough to the casual bystander, butin fact he missed his target spectacularlyby a wide margin. It was as if the gun that he had so carefullyprepared and loadedthe weapon he had to protect himhad now fallen into enemy hands and wasbeing turned against him.That was your judgment call, was it?Yup.You said the dealer was manipulating the order of the cardsthis is related to that, is it?I just thought it was the best place for the marker. It's made a lot of the smaller cards end up atthe end of the pile.How many?Thirtycards. All sevens or lower.Balot thought she felt Oeufcoque grinning inside her gloves.Very good. Now, let's give our dealer friend another little jolt like before.What do you want me to saythis time?She was almost afraid to ask. And indeed Oeufcoque's answer was that she should deliver a veritabledeath blow. His aimwas so true. Ruthless.Who are you and what have you done with Oeufcoque?What have I done withOeufcoque. Half-baked, wishy-washy. That's what you're supposed to be, it's what your namemeans, isn't it? And yet here you are!Hmph, you mean I'm going too far instead of not far enough for once? Maybe you're right. Butneeds mustthis is a case where the ends justify the means.The mouse doth protest too much, Balot thought to herself.She giggled inside, then squeezed her glove to show that it was okay, she was with him. Then she didas he had suggested.Hey, Uncle?She waited until the dealer was just about to finish exhaling and was at his most defenseless beforecontinuing with her killer blow.I'm bored here. Won't you take me someplace where there are some nice men around?She was no longer rejecting the place. This was a personal rejection: she found the dealerunappealing. The dealer's expression didn't change. Instead, he stopped breathing. As if he'd had hisbreath sucked out of him. Indeed, for all practical intents and purposes Marlowe was now dead as adealer; no longer was he the invincible master of the gaming table. He was a private individual, and asnubbed one at that.The Doctor tried awkwardly to persuade Balot to stay. Let's just try and enjoy the game, no? Look,you are winning, after all. If you give up now you're turning your back on the rainbow that could lead tothe pot of gold.Then he turned to the dealer and shrugged apologetically.It was the dealer's turn to speak. I do apologize most sincerely for any way in which you find melacking, my lady It was a small miracle that he could still muster up the self-restraint necessary tomaintain his composure and keep smiling.Then the dealer removed his earpiece with his hand and crushed it beneath the table. He was out ofradio contact with the rest of the casino. But Balot had managed to catch the last transmission that thedealer had received.It was fromthe floor manager, a frantic order to let another dealer take his place.Outwardly calm but seething with rage and shame on the inside, the dealer was now losing hand overfist without even noticing that he was doing so.Just as well that he's usually such an accomplished dealer. The casino really is on the defensivethey don't know how to play this one.Oeufcoque too had noticed that the dealer had rid himself of his earpiece.Despite this fact, and somewhat surprisingly, the casino had yet to send along a replacement.They must be finding it hard to decide whether this dealer has lost the plot or whether he stillmight be able to pull it back for them. They should have checked us out by now.Do theystill think we're suckers? Easymarks who just happen to be on a luckystreak?They must. The one person in the whole casino who should be able to identify us accurately isShell-Septinos. He's supposed to be the owner hereBalot shrugged inwardly.He's probablyforgotten all about us, right? With that operation that sucks out his memoriesIt doesn't suck themout, exactlyOeufcoque chuckled grimly.According to our sources, he's preoccupied with this transaction he's trying to set up. This reallyis our chance right now.Transaction? You mean his marriage?Exactly. Or rather the de facto promotion that he gets by marrying into the family of the house heworks for. If we can pull the rug from under his feet then we may be able to bring his bosses down toothey're the real target, after all.Bring them down and send them to hellthat was what Oeufcoque wanted to say, but he justmanaged to restrain himself.It would have been easy enough to simply batter the enemy into submission, after all. They had themeans right in front of them. But it was more complicated than that, however thrilling the prospect was ofseeing the enemy squirm.To be burnt out. It meant something. To know. It wasn't so much the question of good versus evil thatconcerned Oeufcoque and the Doctorit was the question of innocence and experience. What you couldlearn from seeing the world, with all its wonders and horrors reflected back at you. Could Balot learn,could she respond? If not then Oeufcoque wouldn't have gone out of his way to help her as he did.Balot sat there silently, waiting for her moment. The point tally was rising steadily. She was winningat a rate of over 60 percent of the hands, and this winning streak showed no sign of abating. The nines inthe pile of cards had all been used up, and the number of cards worth seven or below had been depletedmassively. The ratio of tens to other cards changed massively, and then suddenly there was a run of aces,appearing like a sudden gold rush and then disappearing again, a flash in the pan.The cards were plunging toward an inevitable equilibrium. Balot maintained her calm breathing, butinside her heart was pounding.Then there was a succession of small cardsthe calmbefore the squall. The moment had arrived.This is it. Time to go all-in.Balot took her cue from Oeufcoque and placed her hands on the pile that she had been keeping safe.One of the three piles she had created from her bankroll. Her troops that she had held in reserve, ready tobe deployed in the moment of certain victory.It wasn't a huge pile in physical terms, as the individual chips were all of high denominations. Butwhen the dealer clocked just how much was now at stake, his hand that had been resting on the card shoejolted as if he had been struck by lightning.Might as well use them upBalot spoke to the Doctor, but it was the dealer she was watching.Very good. I accept your challenge, O niece of mine! The Doctor responded as if he were calling araise in poker and piled his chips onto the table to follow suit.And then there was half a million dollars' worth of chips in front of Balot, with the Doctor not too farbehind, with a stake of roughly three hundred thousand dollars.Passersby couldn't help but stop in their tracks when they saw the extraordinary sums that were now atstake. They whispered among themselves. The dealer somehow managed to drag his hand back to the cardshoe and force out a smile for the benefit of Balot and the Doctor.The atmosphere around the table had certainly taken a strange turn.The cards arrived. An 8. That was to say, the majority of the cards now on the table were eights.The Doctor had an 8 and an 8, a total of sixteen. Balot had an 8 and a 7, total fifteen.The dealer's upcard was also an 8.Stay, said the Doctor.Stay.The dealer gulped and turned over his hidden card.It was a 7. He drew again: 8. Then the red marker appeared.The red card that represented absolute, perfect victory for Balot and the Doctor.The dealer froze, while the spectators seemed to boil over with excitement.Some of them understood the significance of the sequence of cards that had just passed. The magic ofsevens and eights. When the remaining cards were a couple of sevens and at least four eights, the dealerwas doomed by the rules to lose, no matter what.All the players had to do in this situation was stay. Whether the dealer had fourteen, fifteen, or sixteen,he'd have to draw and would end up busting.Such was the power of percentages. The rules that had been so meticulously crafted to give the houseits edge; this was the one moment when they were turned upside down, guaranteeing the house certaindefeat. It was a gun fired at point-blank range: absolute.Hmm, I don't seem to be able to use the chips up. Theyjust keep on growing.Balot was so casual as to seem offhand. The Doctor smiled at her. Well, then, we'll just have to askfor a nice big special container to fit everything in.The Doctor spoke as if he were ordering a particularly rare vintage wine, and the crowd respondedaccordingly. The whole floorup until a few moments ago so serene and tranquilwas now buzzing.Amid the noise the dealer located another radio to speak to an attendant. To ask him to comply withthe Doctor's request. To bring out the casino's greatest treasure.Eventually the attendant emerged fromthe other side of the floor, carrying a scarlet box.He placed it down on the table and opened it, reverentially, for Balot to behold. No sooner had helifted the lid than a golden light spilled out into the room. The light fromtwelve golden chips.Now, choose whichever one you like, the Doctor said in an encouraging tone.Balot knew exactly what she was doing. Gingerly, she reached out and took one of the chips that hadthe OctoberCorp company emblemetched onto it. The crowd bubbled up again.Oh, and leave the box on the table, will you? We may need a few more of those chips before long.The Doctor's words caused yet another stir in the crowd. A match with million-dollar chips at stake!Normally such a thing was unheard of outside the special Shows.Far from worrying about his catastrophic loss, the dealer seemed to be getting angrier and angrier. Hestarted shuffling again, with a vengeance. Fully intent on taking back what he had just lost.As he shuffled, Oeufcoque was surreptitiously dissecting the contents of the chip. He caused part ofthe glove to turn, gently fixing Balot's hand so that it made a fist shape, with the chip packed away safelyin her grip out of view.Miniature laser cutters appeared inside her fist, moving about inside the space of a few millimeters toscan the contents of the chip, extracting its contents.Got it. This is where Shell's memories are stored.Oeufcoque extracted the contents of the chip carefully, cutting them out with absolute precision, takingcare not to damage any of the contents. He then transferred the contents into a little pocket in the gloves hemade specially for the purpose that moment. The pocket was sewn up behind the memory chip, and thehole left in the original was filled up with identical material so that no one would ever have been able toguess that it had been tampered with. The whole process was done in absolute silence.To take the yolk without touching the white or the shell. This was what it was all about. The wholeoperation took slightly less than five minutes.Balot's right hand was released, and she slowly opened her hand that held the chip.One down, three to go.The words floated up inside Balot's left hand, and she squeezed back in return.At that moment, Balot was assailed by a sensation she hadn't experienced before.Oeufcoque's writing was always inside her glove, never on the outside. The letters themselves wereinside out. Furthermore Balot's hand was bunched tight. Their conversation should have been utterlyundetectable to the outside eye.And yet, at that very moment, Balot felt that their conversation was being watched