Sucker bet - James Swain [1]
“A short dick?” Candy said, giggling.
“Short deck. It’s where the dealer purposely removes a number of high-valued cards. It gives the house an unbeatable edge.”
“And you figured that out,” she said.
“Yes, my dear, I figured it out.”
Jack saw Candy’s hand slip beneath the table and into Moon’s lap. Moon’s face lit up like a lantern. “You’re so smart,” she cooed.
Jack reshuffled the cards. For Moon to have figured out that a dealer was playing with a short deck meant that Moon was an experienced card-counter. Card-counters were instinctively observant, and Jack realized that he was going to have to be especially careful tonight, or risk blowing their scam before it ever got off the ground. He slid the two decks in front of Moon, who cut them with a plastic cut card.
“Good luck,” Jack said.
Then he started to deal.
Jack Lightfoot was not your typical card mechanic.
Born on the Navajo Indian reservation in New Mexico, he’d been in trouble almost from the time he’d started walking. At seventeen, he’d gone to federal prison for a string of convenience store robberies and spent the next six years doing hard time.
The prison was filled with gangs. Jack had gravitated to a Mexican gang and hung out in their cell block. The Mexicans were heavy gamblers and often played cards all day long. They liked different games—seven-card stud, Omaha, razzle-dazzle, Texas hold ’em. Each game had its subtleties, but the game Jack fell in love with was blackjack. And whenever it was Jack’s turn to deal, blackjack was the game he chose.
Dealing blackjack gave Jack an edge over the other players. He’d worked it out and figured it was slightly less than 2 percent. It was offset by the fact that if he lost a round, he had to pay off the other players, and that could be devastating to his bankroll. But if he won, the other players had to pay him. Blackjack was the game with the greatest risk but also the greatest reward.
One night, Jack had lain on his cot, thinking. He’d seen a lot of cheating among the Mexicans. They marked cards with shoe polish or palmed out a pair before a hand began. It occurred to him that if he was going to cheat, wouldn’t blackjack be the game to do it in?
He thought about it for months. The Mexicans were suspicious guys, and manipulating the cards was out of the question. But instead of manipulating the cards, why not manipulate the other players into making bad decisions? Guys did it in poker all the time. It was called bluffing.
Why not blackjack?
One night, one of the Mexicans gave Jack a magic mushroom. Jack ate it, then went to bed. When he woke up a few hours later, he was screaming, his body temperature a hundred and six.
While Jack was strapped to a bed in the prison infirmary for two days, his brain turned itself inside out. When he finally came out of it, a single thought filled his head.
With the turn of a single card, he could change the odds at blackjack.
With the turn of a single card, he could force other players into making bad decisions.
With the turn of a single card, he could master a game that had no masters.
One card, that was all it took.
And all Jack had to do was turn it over.
He howled so hard, they kept him strapped to the bed for an extra day.
Nigel Moon’s stack of chips soon resembled a small castle. A crowd of gaping tourists had assembled behind the table to watch the carnage. The Brit cast a disparaging look over his shoulder, like he was pissed off by all the attention.
“You’ve got groupies,” Candy said.
Moon’s eyes danced behind his sour expression. He sipped his martini, trying to act nonchalant. Candy stared at him dreamily.
“Congratulations, sir,” Jack said, his lines committed to memory. “You just broke the house record.”
Moon fished the olive out of his martini glass. “And what record is that, my good man?”
“No one has ever won eighty-four hands before,” Jack informed him.
The Brit sat up stiffly, basking in the moment. “Is that how many I’ve won?”
“Eighty-four, yes, sir.”
“And no one’s ever done that before.”
“Not in a row, no, sir.”
“So I