Chapter 193: All In

Harvey awoke to Tyler’s foot stepping down on his gut.“Oh! Sorry!” Tyler whispered. “I didn’t know you were down there.”

Scooting towards the foot of the bed, Tyler got up and picked his way around Cash towards the bathroom. He’d relinquished his spot on the couch to Celeste, joining Harvey in sleeping on the floor of their tiny hotel room. He had no idea what time it was thanks to Hell’s eternal dusk, so he fumbled around for his watch.

“Crap!” he swore when he saw it was already 8:30, getting up and hurriedly changing into the outfit he’d prepared for the poker tournament. He didn’t exactly fit in with the other sinners wearing the black combat fatigues he’d stolen, so instead he pulled on a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and his I love udders hoodie he’d bought to cover up his Cognition Matrix. His golden hair was still an issue, but it was close enough to blonde that he could sell it to a room full of drunken demons.

“Hurry up,” Harvey urged through the bathroom door. Like any good brother sharing a hotel room, Tyler took way too long before letting Harvey rush in, use the bathroom, brush his teeth, and run some water through his hair to try and tame his raging case of bedhead. When he was presentable enough, he rushed towards the front door, not waiting for the others who were all rubbing the sleep from their eyes.

“Where are you going?” Steve questioned, his head still buried in a red-silk pillow.

“Ask the angels. I have to go,” he replied.

He’d love to sit and go over the plan with his father, who’d been asleep while they talked it over with Cash the night before, but he only had a half hour before the tournament started and would hate for his only chance to get up close and personal with the lieutenant to disappear all because he overslept. Walking out the elevator doors, he saw the Casino floor was as lively as ever, except now the demons were all noticeably drunker. Neckties that had once been cinched tightly under perfectly pressed collars were now suspiciously absent, tossed away as demons unbuttoned their dress shirts and exposed their bare chests, presumably in a half-hearted attempt to cool down after the room filled with thousands of people’s worth of body heat. Tight dresses that hugged the demonesses' exaggerated features were torn and stained, and their hair was starting to get matted to their heads.

Harvey pushed through the thrum of people and made his way to the Cashier by the poker tables he saw yesterday. Surprisingly, the line wasn’t any longer than it had been the night before, and he only saw a smattering of people sitting in the poker room despite the tournament starting in 15 minutes.

“Next!” the teller called out.

“Is this where I sign up for the poker tournament?” Harvey asked.

“Not unless you’re pulling out chips,” he sighed.

“I’ve already got some,” Harvey responded. “Unless I need special ones specifically for the poker room.”

“Nope. How do you not know this already? We’ve been here for weeks?” the teller asked.

Harvey’s heart skipped a beat, and he scrambled for an answer. Before he could come up with one, the teller waved him off. “Just go sit down, and someone will come around to your table.”

Not wanting to push his luck by asking why the tables were still so empty, he gave a grateful nod and rushed over to the poker tables. The velvet ropes blocking off the room had been moved to create an opening, so he walked through and found an empty table to sit at.

[That was close.]

It turned out that Harvey didn’t have to rush after all, since apparently the 9 AM start time posted on the sign was more of a suggestion. Since more than half of the participants were currently blackout drunk, the Lieutenant gave them plenty of time to check their watches, realize they were an hour late, and scurry over. Luckily, a cocktail waitress came around to take the orders of the people waiting for the tournament to start, so Harvey was able to get himself a bagel and some orange juice to help pass the time. It wasn’t until 10:30 that an organizer walked onto a stage against the wall, grabbed a microphone, and began explaining the rules.

“All right, you all know how this works. The staff are coming around to each table to take everyone’s name, so keep your ass in your seat until I tell you to move. Buy-ins are 100,000 merit. If you don’t have it, you’re part of the first group that’s allowed to get up and leave.”

Harvey was surprised to see a quarter of the assembled demons and humans stagger away. They were all the drunkest of the bunch, but it still meant fewer hands he’d have to survive to get to the final table.

“Blinds will start at 50/100 and will increase when we rebalance the tables every 30 minutes. If you look at the screen behind me,” she paused, pointing to the projector screen above her head. “You’ll see how many people are left total and how many need to lose before you’re in the money. Each player is allowed two rebuys of 100,000 additional merit – no more, no less – and you have to come up to our table so we can keep track. If we catch you trying to add chips to the table yourself – and we will – I will personally see to it that your wings get ripped off feather by feather and fed to the Lieutenant’s hellhound. Do I make myself clear?”

“Can you shut up and start this thing already?” Someone shouted from the crowd.

She just scoffed and walked off the stage. Harvey was relieved to hear the music blaring throughout the Casino had been cut off inside the poker room, and noticed arrays in the walls and ceiling creating a bubble of blissful quiet. The rowdy crowd quickly settled in, going so quiet that he could hear the cards being shuffled as workers with clipboards started taking down names one player at a time. It took another 20 minutes to handle the buy-ins and registration, and everyone cheered when the first 30-minute table timer started counting down on the projector screen.

The dealer dealt the first hand, and Harvey looked down at the 6 of spades and the 2 of hearts.

he thought, tossing in his cards when it got around to him. He hadn’t been either of the blind bets, so skipping this hand cost him nothing. He was surprised to see most of the others call their way to the flop, even after the big blind raised. The flop came 7 of hearts, Jack of diamonds, and 3 of clubs.

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[Rainbow. Odds someone has a flush just went down.]

They were cards that made it hard to bet unless you had a jack, a set of 7’s or 3’s, or a pocket pair of Queens and higher. He expected most of the table to fold after the first player made a small bet, but 5 of the 9 sitting at the table actually called. The turn and the river weren’t anything special, and there were still three demons in the hand.

“Call,” the final demon announced, tossing in 300 merit worth of chips.

“Showdown,” the dealer said. One by one, all three revealed their hands.

[A pair of jacks?] Julius asked, shocked. The others had a pair of 7s and Ace King, a good starting hand, but not anything that should’ve called after the river.

“Ha! Ship those chips over here, boys,” the demoness with the jack of hearts cheered. The other two both grumbled, but didn’t say anything as she raked the pile over.

Over the next half hour, Harvey learned a few things about how demons play poker. Two of the nine at his table were just plain bad, but the rest knew what they were doing. The trick was keeping themselves from tilting so hard they lit their chips on fire.

The first thing he noticed was that they hated folding. He didn’t know if it was some kind of machismo or if they thought the dealer owed them the one card that would win them the hand, but they tended to chase draws far more than they should. Any time they lost a big hand, they’d start limping to every flop just praying they’d get the chance to win some of that money back. In the end, that just led to people playing hands they really had no business being in.

Harvey struggled to wrap his head around it all at first, trying to adapt the pure statistics-based strategy the Cognition Matrix was feeding him in a vain attempt at adapting to the demon’s irrational style. It took some of the skill out of the game, with most relying on luck to win the hand instead of using their bets to tell a good story. It wasn’t until he’d lost his first stack that he gave up on adaptation and returned to playing by the book.

After buying back in and being seated at a new table, he vowed to do exactly what Aurelia and the Cognition Matrix told him to. And as the saying goes, numbers don’t lie.

“That’s three missed flush draws in a row!” the demon swore as Harvey raked in the pot, his set of 10s lying proudly on the felt.

“What can I say? I’m lucky,” Harvey smiled. He’d learned that a little banter after winning a hand would make that demon bluff hard the next time they were in a hand together. There was always a chance they actually had the winning hand from the start, rather than chasing one, but as long as Harvey played the odds perfectly, luring them to bluff more often just meant more money in the pot when he did win.

Table after table, he found their patterns. The demons were still just people with their own personalities, but he was able to generalize enough to find a few weaknesses to exploit. The real problem was the other humans. By the time he’d survived long enough to be in the money, almost half the remaining players were human despite being only 20% of the starting pool. They probably didn’t have a computer in their head telling them exactly what to do, but they could easily pick up on the same patterns in demon behavior that he had. Hell, they’d had weeks and weeks of poker tournaments to refine their strategy.

Luckily, Harvey had built up enough of a bankroll robbing the demons that he could bully those players with his chips, surviving the occasional bad-beat whenever variance didn’t go his way. Instead of breaking for meals like they would at a normal tournament, the casino sent waitresses to bring food to the table, letting them eat while they kept playing. That was fine with Harvey, since it meant the odds the tournament ran late enough that Hell’s commander could start spending his extra lieutenant's worth of essence once it hit midnight were lower.

By the time he’d battled his way to the final table, it was 8:00 PM. Almost 12 hours since he’d been stepped on in the hotel room, and he hadn’t gotten a single moment to talk about his plan with Celeste. He was relieved to see her standing by the entrance, giving him an encouraging nod when he sat at the final table.

“I’ll be damned. You actually made it?” the demon from the blackjack table the night before laughed.

“Of course I did,” Harvey smiled. “The real surprise is that you made it too.”

“So that’s how you want to play it,” the man laughed. “I’m Phil, by the way.”

3 more demons and 3 more humans meandered over before the lieutenant took his seat directly across from the dealer. He didn’t have to say a word for Harvey to realize who he was. He could feel the power in his politely restrained aura, like a lion caged inside a zoo. Docile for the moment, but ready to kill the second someone let it out.

“Congratulations,” the lieutenant nodded to each of them in turn. “Let’s begin.”

The final table was the closest to what he imagined a professional tournament looked like back home, and he would’ve been out in a dozen hands without Julius’ help. No longer were people chasing hands they had slim odds of winning. A single bad beat wasn’t enough to fully tilt someone anymore. It was a battle, and it took almost an hour for the first soldier to fall. If Harvey hadn’t come to the final table with the second-highest chip stack, it would’ve been him. A few unlucky river cards had cost him hands where he had the highest odds of winning after the turn, and he’d managed to lose more chips than the first person to fall. He recouped most of his losses while knocking out two more players, then stayed relatively even until it was just him, Phil, and the lieutenant.

Harvey couldn’t believe his luck. He’d called the lieutenant’s pre-flop raise with pocket 6’s and the flop had come 6, King, Ace.

“Bet 200,000,” Phil announced.

The lieutenant didn’t have to think for long before he made the call. Harvey took a little longer to decide. That bet made sense if either had an Ace or a King, and his set was currently in the lead as long as one of them didn’t have both.

“Call,” Harvey finally said, and the turn came another 6. Harvey couldn’t believe his luck, hitting quads on a board where both Phil and the lieutenant had started building the pot for him. Now he hoped they both had Ace King and would keep the party going.

“Bet 600,000,” Phil said again, glaring at Harvey even though action was on the lieutenant. Harvey couldn’t blame him. Phil wanted to win, but he wasn’t going to mad dog his boss out of a hand.

“Raise 1,000,000,” the lieutenant announced.

“Call,” Harvey replied.

Phil hesitated for a moment, but hardened his resolve and put in the call.

The river card was the 2 of clubs, a brick that wasn’t going to help anyone’s hand if they made it this far. Harvey was scrambling to figure out how to put these guys all in when Phil did it for him.

“All in.”

The lieutenant stared at his subordinate for a long time, trying to glean something from the blank stare Phil returned.

“I’m getting hungry,” he finally sighed. “I guess we’ll make this our last hand. Call.”

“Call!” Harvey blurted, shoving in his chips.

Phil flipped over pocket Kings, giving him a full house. The lieutenant flipped over pocket Aces, giving him an even better full house. Harvey revealed his quads.

“You’re kidding!” Phil exclaimed.

“Nope!” Harvey bubbled, trying to stop himself from smiling so wide his cheeks hurt. He knew the poker tournament didn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, but that didn’t do anything to change the adrenaline that had been coursing through his body all day.

“Congratulations,” the dealer said as a screen appeared in front of him.

“Th… thank you!” Harvey stammered. “And congrats to both of you. 5 and 3.5 million merit isn’t bad for second and third place.”

Harvey hadn’t expected to get paid out before he blew the place up, but now he was rich as long as they made it out alive. The odds of finding another tournament with players drunk and reckless enough not to notice his Cognition Matrix in the future were low enough that he couldn’t turn gambling into a permanent income stream, but at least he was set for the short term.

“Ahh, it was never about the money. All I wanted was access to your private menu at the Slaughterhouse, sir,” Phil cheered.

“Well then, should we head over? The others are already there, so let’s not keep them waiting,” the lieutenant smiled.