Little Myth Marker By Robert Asprin

“The way I hear it, you’re tight all the time,” Don Bruce commented dryly.

“No. I mean right now we’re really tight for finances. We’ve got a lot of capital tied up in the big game tonight.”

“Big game? What big game?”

“Skeeve is going head to head with the Sen-Sen Ante Kid at dragon poker tonight. It’s a challenge match.”

“That’s why I wanted to talk to you about Bunny,” I said. “Since I thought she was the Ax, I didn’t want her around to cause trouble at the game.”

“Why didn’t anyone tell me about this game?” Don Bruce demanded. “It wasn’t in your report!”

“It’s come up since then.”

“What are the stakes?”

I looked at Aahz. I had been so busy trying to learn how dragon poker was played that I had never gotten around to asking about the stakes.

For some reason, my partner suddenly looked uncomfortable.

“Table stakes,” he said.

“Table stakes?” I frowned. “What’s that?”

I half-expected him to tell me he’d explain later, but instead he addressed the subject with surprising enthusiasm.

“In a table stakes game, each of you starts with a certain amount of money. Then you play until one of you is out of chips, or…”

“I know what table stakes are,” Don Bruce interrupted. “What I want to know is how much you’re playing for.”

Aahz hesitated, then shrugged. “A quarter of a million each.” .

“A QUARTER OF A MILLION???”

I hadn’t hit that note since my voice changed.

“Didn’t you know?” the mobster scowled.

“We hadn’t told him,” my partner sighed. “I was afraid that if he knew what the stakes were, he’d clutch. We were just going to give him the stack of chips to play without telling him how much they were worth.”