profits and had to re-buy-in twice. He'd fallen into the classic gambler's trap, becoming so obsessed with winning the big pot that he'd lost sight of how much he was losing. He'd let the game get personal.
His shirt was hot and sticky with sweat. His legs were numb from sitting so long, and his back was aching from hunching forward expectantly to study his cards.
He was down almost a thousand credits on the night, but none of the other players had been able to cash in on his misfortune. With the Sabacc pot capped all the antes and penalties went straight to ORO. He'd have to work a month of grueling shifts in the mines if he ever wanted to see any of those credits again. But it was too late to turn back now. His only consolation was that the Republic ensign was down at least twice as much as he was. Yet each time the man ran out of chips, he'd just reach into his pocket and pull out another stack of credits, as if he had unlimited funds. Or as if he just didn't care.
The CardShark fired out another hand. As he peeked at his cards, Des began to feel the first real hints of self-doubt. What if his feeling was wrong this time? What if this wasn't his night to win? He couldn't remember a moment in the past when his gift had betrayed him, but that didn't mean it couldn't happen.
He pushed his chips in with a weak hand, defying every instinct that told him to fold. He'd have to come up at the start of the next turn, no matter how weak his cards were. Any longer and someone else might steal the sabacc pot he was working so hard to collect.
The marker flickered and the cards shifted. Des didn't bother to look; he simply flipped over his cards and muttered, 'Coming up.'
When he saw his hand he felt like he'd been slapped. He was sitting at negative twenty-three exactly, a bomb-out. The penalty cleaned out his stack of chips.
'Whoa, big fella,' the ensign mocked drunkenly, 'you must be lumsoaked to come up on that. What the brix were you thinking?'
'Maybe he doesn't understand the difference between plus twenty-three and minus twenty-three,' said one of the soldiers watching the match, grinning like a manka cat.
Des tried to ignore them as he paid the penalty. He felt empty. Hollow.
'You don't talk so much when you're losing, huh?' the ensign sneered.
Hate. Des didn't feel anything else at first. Pure, white-hot hatred consumed every thought, every motion, and every ounce of reason in his brain. Suddenly he didn't care about the pot, didn't care about how many credits he had already lost. All he wanted was to wipe the smug expression from the ensign's face. And there was only one way he could do it.
He shot a savage glare in the ensign's direction, but the man was too drunk to be intimidated. Without taking his eyes off his enemy, Des swiped his ORO account card into the reader and rang up another buy-in, ignoring the logical part of his mind that tried to talk him out of it.
The CardShark, its circuits and wires oblivious to what was really going on, pushed a stack of chips toward him and uttered its typically cheery, 'Good luck.'
Des opened with the Ace and two of sabers. He was at seventeen, a dangerous hand. Lots of potential to go too high on his next card and bomb out. He hesitated, knowing that the smart move was to fold.
'Having second thoughts?' the ensign chided.
Acting on an impulse he couldn't even explain, Des moved his two into the interference field, then pushed his chips into the pot. He was letting his emotions guide him, but he no longer cared. And when the next card came up as a three, he knew what he had to do. He shoved his three into the interference field beside the two that was already there. Then he bet the maximum wager and waited for the switch.
There were actually two ways to win the sabacc pot. One was to get a hand that totaled twenty-three exactly, a pure sabacc. But there was an even better hand: the idiot's array. In modified Bespin rules, if you had a hand of two and three in the same suit and drew the face card known as the Idiot, which had no value at all, you had an idiot's array… 23 in the literal sense. It was the rarest hand possible, and it was worth more than even a pure sabacc.
Des was two-thirds of the way there. All he needed now was a switch to take his ten and replace it with the Idiot. Of course, that meant there had to be a switch. And even then he'd have to draw the Idiot off it… and there were only two Idiots in the entire seventy-six-card deck. It was a ridiculously long shot.
The marker came up red; the cards shifted. Des didn't even have to look at his hand: he knew.
He stared right into the ensign's eyes. 'Coming up.'
The ensign looked down at his own hand to see what the switch had given him and began to laugh so hard he could barely show his hand. He had the two of flasks, the three of flasks… and the Idiot!
There were gasps of surprise and murmurs of disbelief from the crowd. 'How do you like that one, boys?' he cackled. 'Idiot's array on the switch!'
He stood up, reaching out for the stack of chips on the small pedestal that sat in the center of the table representing the sabacc pot.
Des whipped his hand out and snagged the young man's wrist in a grip as cold and hard as durasteel, then flipped over his own cards. The entire cantina became silent as a tomb; the ensign's laughter died in his throat. A second later he pulled his hand free and sat back down, dumbfounded. From the far edge of the table somebody let out a long, low whistle of amazement. The rest of the crowd burst into noise.
'… never in my life…'
'… can't believe…'
'. statistically impossible…'
'Two idiot's arrays in the same hand?'
The CardShark summarized the result in the purest analytical fashion. 'We have two players with hands of equal value. The hand will be determined by a sudden demise.'
The ensign didn't react with the same kind of calm. 'You stupid mud-crutch!' he spat out, his voice strangled
