Balot looked at the table, and indeed there were two spades: the ace and the one-eyed jack—so called because the jack of spades faced sideways on the card.
“Blackjack!” the Doctor called out as if it had been his own hand.
That was also the name of the game—Balot’s final challenge.
Also known as twenty-one—the game where you started with two cards and aimed for a total of twenty-one points, competing against the dealer to see who had the higher hand, unless the total was above twenty-one, in which case you bust out of the game. All picture cards were worth ten points, and the ace could be counted as either a one or an eleven, the player’s choice. Simple to learn, fiendishly difficult to master.
There were a number of good reasons why the Doctor had chosen this as their final game.
First of all, this was a game where it was possible to win the million-dollar chips. It had to be a game that was played in the VIP room.
Secondly, with games such as poker and baccarat, you were mainly betting against the other players, not the house; the casino just took its cut, and it was hard to win money from it directly. Difficult, therefore, to get your hands on the coveted million-dollar chips that served as an ostentatious advertisement for the casino. A professional gambler might have found these games amenable to his purposes of building up a steady profit, but Balot was here for a different reason. With blackjack you played directly against the house, the other players being essentially irrelevant. It was one-on-one, player versus casino.
Another key point was that the house edge was unusually low in blackjack. House edge—the statistical edge that the casino enjoyed over time—that small but significant gap between the true odds of a winning hand occurring and the actual payout. In the long run, the house would always win.
With roulette, for example, the actual true odds of a particular number coming up was thirty-eight to one. The payout was thirty-five to one, including the original stake. A player might win an individual game, but over time the odds would win out: the casino’s edge was 5.2 percent. For every thousand dollars that was bet, the house would rake in fifty-two dollars.
It was a little different with blackjack. If you just played normally, guessing and going with the flow, the house edge would certainly be over 5 percent, as in roulette.
But with a proper strategy, it was possible to reduce the house edge to less than 0.5 percent—a unique feature that only blackjack enjoyed. Blackjack wasn’t called a tactician’s game for nothing.
“And best of all, there’s no house minimum and no maximum. A true no-limit game,” said the Doctor, walking casually toward his target table. “Blackjack has always been the best chance a player has to get his hands on the million-dollar chips. In particular, whenever there’s a big game on, the chips are used as calling cards, and they flow backward and forward from player to house like balls in a tennis rally. The house always wins in the end, of course. That’s how good the dealers are here—they let nothing slip.”
The Doctor related this as if he had witnessed it all firsthand. That was how thorough his preparation had been. The intricacies of calculating the house edge were beyond Balot, but she did feel that she had a decent grasp of fundamental strategy. As long as Oeufcoque was in her hand, she was confident that she could play her part.
The only other thing she had to watch out for was not to get too sucked into her surroundings—she had to remain detached from all the glitz and glamor. It all rested on whether she could keep a cool head and play her hand as they had planned.
Suddenly, the Doctor stooped down to look into Balot’s face. “So, what’s the culmination of all our strategy and tactics? What is our best move?” It was almost as if he were asking for a password from a soldier returning from battle.
Balot looked straight back into the Doctor’s blue eyes.
The Doctor smiled when she answered without hesitation.
She squeezed both her hands tightly. She felt like Oeufcoque was speaking the words with her.
She felt Oeufcoque wrapped around her clenched fists, ever so soft. The Doctor and Oeufcoque: always on the lookout for her, sensitive to her feelings.
“Now, let’s go and win. And as soon as we win, we run away,” the Doctor said. He smiled confidently and headed closer toward their objective. The table.
“Here we are—our battleground!” He spoke in a different voice now, loud enough for all others in the surrounding area to hear. The first salvo had been fired.
The table had just taken a pause in between games. The dealer looked up from the cards that he was shuffling and smiled at the Doctor. He had silvery blond hair and green eyes. His every movement was calm and composed, and he continued shuffling uninterrupted even though his eyes no longer looked at his hand.
The Doctor placed his hand on the back of one of the seats—the middle one of seven—and called out to the other punters, “May I?”
“Oh, rather! We were just itching for a
But the Doctor stood there for the moment, hand still on the back of the chair. “We wouldn’t want to interrupt the flow of the cards, you see.” He spoke like a complete beginner and sought approval from the other players.
“Oh, it’s all the same to us, and we wouldn’t want to get in your way,” continued the lady with a laugh. Then she nudged the old man next to her. From her actions it was clear they were together. The old man nodded to the Doctor to welcome him too. He was a skinny little thing—a sprig of parsley next to the fat sausage of the woman.
The next man along took his eyes off the cards for a moment and looked at Balot and the Doctor in order to welcome them. This man sported a mane of lush black hair and wore a fashionable monocle over one eye. He seemed to be considering how the addition of the Doctor and Balot would affect the cards.
The three players already at the table all sat to the right of the chair that the Doctor had just chosen. The monocled man’s seat was the furthest to the right of the semicircular table, and this seat was known as “first base”—it was the first seat to be dealt the cards. By the way he sat on the edge of his seat, waiting for his cards to come, it was safe to say he was a complete addict living in a world of his own.
In their training, the Doctor had explained that you could tell a lot about a blackjack player’s personality from which seat they chose. Now that Balot had seen it in the flesh, it seemed the most obvious thing in the world.
The Doctor responded to their pleasantries in kind and took a seat, and Balot did the same.
“What a delightful young woman,” said the lady. Her face was friendly but she couldn’t hide her curiosity.
Balot dipped her head, and the Doctor answered for her. “Yes, my beautiful young niece has been entrusted to her uncle today for safekeeping.”
“And you’re entertaining her with cards?”
“Yes. Her father and I are in agreement that young people should be exposed to this sort of thing at an early age. Her mother was unsure, but I convinced her by explaining that a person who knows how to play cards knows the meaning of the word ‘perseverance.’ ”
The Doctor gave a knowing smile.
“Perseverance,” the woman repeated, and her smile grew even more friendly. It was as if she had wanted someone to say that word aloud. “I couldn’t agree more!”
Her large frame wobbled, and she prodded the shoulder of the old man next to her. He shrugged his shoulders and joined in. “And composure,” he added, waggling his finger.
The monocled man next to him joined in too. “And wisdom and bravery,” he said with a broad grin.
Balot was growing a little weary of all this grandstanding. The Doctor was a born con man, surely, able to swindle his way into any place. He could manipulate the mood of a gathering just like that. Or perhaps this was what the Doctor was really like back in the day when he was a decorated researcher. He continued to ingratiate
