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“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

The security chief had, in fact, said that practically every time Data dealt, as the second officer had been favoring complex variations that often involved wild cards. Riker allowed such things mainly because they helped vary the routine for their friendly game, but they were the sorts of things that would never be tolerated at serious professional tournaments.

Vale was apparently a purist, and Riker wished even more fervently that she’d gotten into the game sooner.

Data dealt the hand, and betting proceeded apace. Over the course of that and the next three betting rounds, no one got the queen of spades up, so the game was never reset. Riker was grateful, as whenever he had a good hand in this game, the queen almost invariably came up, and the redeal would provide him with a junk hand. This time, with one down card left to be dealt, he had a pair of tens showing, with the ten of spades in the hole. Three of a kind was a decent hand, and the ten of spades had a good chance of being the high spade in the hole as well, since the ace, king, and jack were showing in front of Picard, La Forge, and Troi, respectively. Data and Troi had both folded, and on this last bet, La Forge did likewise, leaving only Vale, Picard, and Riker.

Riker studied the table. The four cards Picard had showing included nothing useful beyond that ace of spades. Riker himself had the ace of hearts, and Data’s now-folded hand had the ace of diamonds, so the best Picard could have was two aces—unless he had the queen of spades, a wild card, in the hole.

About a year prior to the destruction of the EnterpriseD, Picard joined the poker game for the first time, saying that he should have done so years earlier. Within an hour of playing at the table with him that evening, Riker agreed wholeheartedly, for one simple reason. Picard might have been the finest captain in the fleet. He might have been able to recover from experiences as brutal as Borg assimilation and Cardassian torture. He might have been perfectly at home amid the landmines of Klingon politics or the labyrinths of some ancient ruins,

But, his claims to have been “quite the card player” in his youth notwithstanding, Jean-Luc Picard was a very mediocre poker player.

It wasn’t that he was particularly bad at it. He had a fine poker face—Riker found few “tells” in his facial expressions or gestures that he could use to his advantage—but he also wasn’t particularly good at betting properly or judging the cards on the table beyond his own hand. As a result, he regularly stayed in long past the point where he should fold, and was often the first to run out of chips, mostly as a result of staying in too long with weak hands. He was better at draw games—where there were no cards showing to the other players, and so one relied on the ability to read people, at which Picard excelled—than stud games.

On this hand, Picard had been betting in his usual manner—not aggressively, but not passively, either. Unfortunately, that meant he either had the pair of aces, and he thought that was an improvement on Riker’s pair of tens and Vale’s pair of threes, or he had both the ace and the wild card in the hole, giving him three aces and a better hand than Riker’s.

As for Vale, in addition to the pair of threes, she also had a six of hearts and a seven of clubs showing. It was possible she had a straight.

Only one way to find out, Riker said after Data gave him an unnecessary reminder that the bet was his with the high hand showing.

“Check,” Riker said. He wanted to see how Vale and Picard bet.

Vale, however, was no fool. “Check,” she repeated.

Picard, predictably, put in two gray chips. “I bet twenty.”

Not high enough to scare anyone out. Riker put in four gray chips. “Your twenty and up twenty.”

Vale, her expression unreadable, put in four gray chips. “Call.”

Picard’s expression was just as unreadable as he did likewise.

Data dealt the final card down. Years of long