Mardock Scramble

Chapter 9

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Book III:
THE THIRD EXHAUST
Chapter 9
CRANK SHAFT
01
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 Sh.e.l.l 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-rehea.r.s.ed 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
circ.u.mstances, 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 ident.i.ty, 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 circ.u.mstances.
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 circ.u.mstances was S—the symbol for stay.
Balot would have played it differently, but she would have been wrong. Under these circ.u.mstances,
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 circ.u.mstances. 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 a.s.similate 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!
–n.o.body 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 coc.o.o.ned 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed a gla.s.s 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-a.s.s!
–Well, some people like having their a.s.ses kissed, as you put it. And it opens up a c.h.i.n.k 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. Amus.e.m.e.nt 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
amus.e.m.e.nt. Everything was riding on this battle—her whole world. She couldn’t allow herself to be
fl.u.s.tered 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
circ.u.mstances, of course, but if you were playing by the book then the correct move would be to hit, sir.”
A first-cla.s.s 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-cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sionate, 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 plat.i.tudes 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 circ.u.mspect 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 circ.u.mvent 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 plat.i.tudes. “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

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