Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Lexi
I hoped Gray was right, so I turned around and kept playing. And winning.
I endured a small losing streak when I stopped concentrating on the cards and started calculating my odds of my winning as many hands as I had against the house.
I slowly increased my bets as we got farther into the cards, where I was better able to calculate when the odds were in my favor based upon the cards that had been played.
Despite having only a small edge over the dealer, I kept on winning.
I realized that even with perfect strategy, I was deliriously lucky.
The girls, however, weren’t buying the luck story.
They were convinced I was the blackjack savant.
They laughed, cheered, and pretended like we were obnoxiously fortunate, all to try to hide what they thought was my calculating genius.
Gwen kept ordering daiquiris, Basia showed off her baby bump to distract the dealer, and I kept quietly winning.
After some time, the pit boss disappeared. Minutes later, our middle-aged dealer was replaced with another guy with a head of dark curly hair and a name tag that read Bento. He collected the cards and reshuffled them and loaded the shoe again. Bento didn’t smile when he dealt the next hand.
I was cautious with the new dealer and the reshuffled cards and pushed the distractions out of my head and focused on the game.
Surprisingly, during my hot run, no one joined our table.
It made me wonder if there was a gambler’s superstition about avoiding blackjack tables with a hot player.
Still, my big stack of chips and the noise of the girls had attracted a small group of curious onlookers.
There was an audible “Ooh” when I made a large bet after determining that with the cards left, I had very favorable odds.
“I’m sorry, madam, but the table limit is one thousand dollars.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means that’s the maximum bet you can make on any one hand.”
“Okay, sorry.” I pulled some chips until I had exactly one thousand on the table.
“Are you sure you want to bet that much, Lexi?” Basia asked with a hint of concern.
“Don’t worry, Basia,” Gray laughed. “Lexi knows what she’s doing.”
Their conversation brought me back to the reality that I was wagering real money…
and a lot of it. Playing with chips, I had lost the sense of cautiousness with money that I usually exhibited.
Suddenly, I wasn’t as sure of my bet as I had been.
I reached to retrieve my bet, but it was too late.
The dealer had already flipped up a card in front of me.
It was a ten. Seconds later he flipped me another ten.
Twenty. Almost a sure win. My mind raced, trying to calculate the possibilities of losing.
“Do you want to split the tens?” The dealer interrupted my concentration.
“What?”
“Are you going to split the tens?”
“How do you do that?”
“Are you for real, lady?” When he saw the confused look on my face, he explained. “You put out another bet, same as the first, and you are now playing two hands with each of them having a ten in them.”
The dealer had a seven faceup, and I knew that a high proportion of ten-and-higher cards remained.
The odds of me getting one or two very good hands were favorable.
I pushed out another thousand dollars and waited anxiously as the dealer laid a card on each of my tens.
One was a king and the other a nine. I stood on both hands and won them when the dealer flipped his hole card and it was a jack.
Four thousand dollars. Gwen and Basia squealed together as I stacked the chips carefully in front of me, hoping that no one noticed my quivering hands. Their screams attracted a few more people, and the growing crowd added to my nervousness.
The dealer reshuffled and the play continued.
Plagued by doubt induced by the big hand and the freshly reshuffled deck, I slipped into more conservative wagers.
As the hands and bets flowed in front of me, the game entered a satisfying rhythm in my brain.
I wasn’t even trying to win anymore. I was just maximizing my probabilities, trying to find the optimum bet for the situation…
observing the cards, calculating probabilities, and minimizing errors.
I was in my groove, and so…I kept on winning. A lot.
Somewhere in that haze, I vaguely recall someone offering me a drink, which I refused, and another player sat down next to me.
He was making small bets and trying to engage me in conversation.
I ignored him, as I was too focused on the game in front of me.
He was helpful, as his hands revealed more cards and improved my estimates of the odds.
I continued to win more than I lost. Much more.
I was killing it.
Bento dealt the next hand. My cards were nineteen in total.
“Stay,” I said calmly.
He flipped, drew, and busted. And swore softly under his breath.
Gray shook her head. “Damn. She did it again. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Basia clapped from her seat, her baby bump bouncing against the table edge. “Lexi is our blackjack queen.”
I glanced up at Bento, noticing his smile had become more of a grimace for the last ten hands. I could practically hear his teeth grinding. His shuffles were getting increasingly dramatic, and he had started to glare at me while keeping that grimace in place. As if daring me to lose.
I didn’t. I just kept winning.
A couple of hands later, another dealer replaced him and my fellow player left.
Another player tried to sit down but, after a look from the dealer, decided that a different table might be better.
This dealer was older and had a bald head and a thick mustache and looked like he ate nails for breakfast. His name tag said Frank, but he seemed more a Bruno who worked as a bouncer in a mafia club.
His hands were as big as laptops and his biceps strained against his white dress shirt.
I was sure he had “badass” tattooed on his body in multiple places.
If they were going after intimidation-style tactics, it was working.
“Good evening, ladies,” he said, voice gravelly, as if he’d smoked a hundred cigarettes just this morning. “I’ll be your new dealer.”
“Hi, Frank,” Gwen said sweetly, lifting her cherry daiquiri at him. Apparently, she wasn’t scared, or maybe she’d just had one too many of those daiquiris to know better.
He grinned, flashing a silver tooth, which made me swallow hard. Then he turned a laser gaze on me. “You a student?” he asked.
“No,” I replied.
“A math teacher?”
“No.” He was clearly fishing, trying to figure out how I was winning.
“So, how are you doing so well in the game?”
“Luck,” I squeaked, but it kind of came out like a question. I could see he wasn’t buying it. I was a terrible liar anyway.
Thankfully, that concluded our small talk until I won the next three hands in a row. Frank paused and then eyed my chips. “So, how much are you up now?”
“About six thousand dollars, give or take,” Basia offered cheerfully.
“Six thousand, seven hundred and ninety,” I corrected automatically.
Frank raised an eyebrow. “That’s pretty specific.”
“It’s the exact amount,” I replied. “I’ve been keeping track.”
“Impressive,” he stated while twisting his mouth like he was tasting something that didn’t entirely agree with him. “Have you been playing long?”
Behind me, Gwen gushed, “No, this is her first time, and she’s amazing.”
Gray tried to hush her. “Let Lexi concentrate on her game.”
Distracted by them, I missed what the dealer said to me, so I asked him to repeat it.
“Are you going to place a bet?” He leaned forward intimidatingly. “We don’t have all day.”
It was all starting to be too much for this introvert. I was done. All I wanted was a soak in a hot tub and a quiet room with no onlookers. I pushed a stack of chips forward before realizing it was too many. Sheepishly, I removed enough to make the bet an even one thousand dollars.
“Going big again, Lexi?” Basia asked. Turning to the crowd, she added, “She must know something we don’t.”
Great, that was all I needed, people thinking I was cheating somehow.
The dealer looked me squarely in the eyes.
My instinctively reaction was to flinch, but his whole shtick was beginning to annoy me.
Despite what anyone thought, I wasn’t cheating.
I was playing smart cards and getting a little lucky.
But that wasn’t wrong. That was why people came to casinos—at least, that’s what I thought.
So, I stared back at him unafraid, until he finally dealt.
The first card was an ace and the second was an ace, too, and the crowd around the table murmured excitedly.
“Can I split those cards?” I asked the dealer, who was showing a seven in front of him.
“If you wish.”
I pushed another thousand out and the dealer flipped over the first card. It was a queen. Blackjack. Gwen and the girls shrieked, but I kept my attention on the dealer as he flipped over a king for my second ace. Another blackjack.
Holy card luck.
Before I could react, I felt a rush of cold liquid down the back of my neck.
Yelping, I turned around to find Gwen with an empty daiquiri glass in her hand, jumping up and down.
When she saw me glaring at her, she covered her mouth.
“Oh my gosh. I’m so sorry, Lexi. I got a little excited and spilled my drink.
Two blackjacks in a row. That’s just crazy lucky.
” She tried to mop the mess off my back with some paper napkins, but it only made my shirt stick to me more.
Suddenly I felt Gray’s hand on my shoulder and heard the quick intake of her breath. The crowd fell silent. I turned to find the casino pit boss standing behind me, and he didn’t look happy. A shiver ran down my spine.
He gave me a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Good evening, ladies. How are you doing tonight?”