“I think you’re bluffing, big brother. Up another forty.”
I gulped and pushed another stack of my diminishing pile of chips into the pot.
“Call.”
“You got me,” the troll shrugged. “Out.”
“Well, Skeeve. That leaves you and me. I’ve got an elf-high flush.”
She displayed her hand and looked at me expectantly.
I turned my hole cards over with what I hoped was a confident flourish.
Silence reigned as everyone bent forward to stare at my hand.
“Skeeve, this is garbage,” Tananda said at last. “Aahz folded a better hand than this without his hole cards. I had you beat on the board.”
“What she’s trying to say, partner,” Aahz smirked, “is that you should have either folded or raised. Calling the bet when the cards she has showing beat your hand is just tossing away money.”
“Okay, okay! I get the point.”
“Do you? You’ve still got about fifty chips there. Are you sure you don’t want to wait until you’ve lost those, too? Of maybe we should redivide the chips and start over … again.”
“Lighten up, Aahz,” Tananda ordered. “Skeeve had a system that had worked for him before. Why shouldn’t he want to try it out before being force-fed something new?”
What they were referring to was my original resistance to taking lessons in dragon poker. I had pretty much decided to handle the upcoming game the same way I had played the game at the Even-Odds rather than try to crash-learn the rules. After some discussion (read as: argument) it was agreed that we should play a demonstration game so that I could show my coaches how well my system worked.