Arcades is a game of chance, mixed with skill and luck.
That had been the first lesson Valentinian’s dad had taught him, when he sat his young son down to teach him the game.
Nikephoros Tarasicodissa had started a family late, already in his fifties and largely ready to settle down. Valentinian’s disgrace had ricocheted back and pretty much pushed Nikephoros into permanent retirement from the tentative state he had occupied before.
But he had taught his son how spacers killed time between runs and while alone in the isolation of a warpbubble.
Turned out Valentinian was pretty good at it.
Most of a card game like Arcades poker was learning the unconscious fidgets another player telegraphs when the cards are good or bad. When he’s bluffing or when he’s sandbagging you. Professionals learn to suppress them entirely, and then offer up false signals that make suckers out of amateurs.
The man on Valentinian’s left, the one who looked like a middle-aged captain, was a pro. The merchant on his right was a studied amateur. The other spacer with them was a mark.
Butler Vidy-Wooders was a card sharp. And a bully, but Valentinian knew that already.
A man who had been bigger than anyone but immediate family while still a kid, and grew into a monster who could push anyone around as an adult.
Of course, the shock pistol on Valentinian’s right thigh today was a different model than he normally carried. For some reason, he’d gone into the armory and pulled out the heaviest version he had and strapped it on. It might kill the average human, if he had to shoot someone, even in self-defense.
It would work just fine on a M’Rai bodybuilder with a chip on his shoulder.
Hopefully tonight was just a long con, a shell game where things weren’t what they appeared.
Valentinian really didn’t care if he ended up losing the table stakes he had put down. Right now, he was still playing with profits from that punk back on Bohrne.
Twenty minutes in, and the mark was toast. It was almost a blessing to the man to wipe him out quickly and let him sit back to watch. Maybe he would learn a few things about the game from expert players.
Valentinian and Vidy-Wooders had pretty much split the mark’s funds between them, with the other two running about even from where they had started.
With an honest deck, people get lucky, and this early in the night, nobody was betting huge amounts to try to force hands and pots.
Mostly a friendly thing. Without the M’Rai glowering at people, it might have even been a pleasant evening with strangers. Many poker games turned out that way, if nobody had an axe to grind.
The deal was back to Valentinian. He shuffled the cards a little sloppy, just because he could, and kicked a chip into the pot for an ante. Arcades was a game of seven cards. He dealt everyone one card up, one down, and one up, nodding to the man on his right to bid, sitting on an unmatched pair of Wedgestones, one granite and one bronze.
A Perfect Arcade had six cards, all in one suit: Capstone, both Wedgestones, both Columns, and the Threshold. If you built from more than one suit, you had a Mixed Arcade. Without a Capstone, you had a Hallway, for the third best hand you could Build. With everything but a Threshold, you had a Tunnel.
It went down from there, with a Corridor being just Wedgestones and Columns, and then you got into Patterns of Six of a Kind, down to Four. It could be a complicated game to learn all the ways winning hands balanced against each other, but mostly it was a game of people.
Watching them. Learning how their mind worked from the way the eyes dilated. It would have been most fun to have Sheriff Bolat-Nurlan here at the table tonight. But that man was a storyteller with a violin for a voice. Take you up or down, as the story unfolded.
“Two,” the merchant bid, kicking in a pair of chips to the pot.
It was early in the hand. Nobody was going to go all in at this point. Certainly not on three of seven cards. The best hand you could have right now would be matching up a Capstone with both Wedgestones. And that only gave you a High Stack. Four of a kind could beat that, and wasn’t hard to draw when there were twelve Columns or Wedgestones in the deck.
So Valentinian was a little surprised when Butler raised on the first round.
“Five,” the M’Rai bully said with a semi-triumphant growl and a disdainful flick to toss the chips into the pot.
The two cards up were a Wedgestone and a Threshold, so he was already bluffing, pushing people to expect an Arcade later.
Valentinian held his internal commentary tight and let his face show a curious disbelief. That sort of thing had worked well with the punk. It tended to work well with players who substituted intimidation for skill.
He had three Columns. Possibly he could build an Arcade, depending on how the cards went, but still a winning hand by itself, one time in five.
The other players called and play continued.
Valentinian smiled and dealt. He didn’t have to beat the man at the table. His was just the pretty face that distracted you while the bad people went to work in the shadows.