Mardock Scramble

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 different types—the king, queen, jack, and ten. The cards in our hand have little effect 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 off 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 them and was obviously delighted by