143 Chapter 143:

Ace got back to the hotel at about 1 am, pretty late for the time he should be coming back, realistically. He was supposed to have a restful and early sleep, in order to be ready to face the day.

Luckily, he could handle sleeping a low amount of hours quite well, even if he had worked hard the day before. Today had been a good day regardless, what he did not expect to see when he got there, however, was Win, on his tablet, watching something while taking down notes.

Ace peered over his shoulder, "What are you doing?", a scared Win turned around, hiding the screen of the table. He looked at Ace and breathed out.

"Just looking over some past videos, and making notes.", he said, clearly happy it had not been coach or Nai that caught him.

"You should go to bed, it's pretty late already, and I know these fights don't take a very big toll on you, but you should rest nonetheless, you never know if your opponent will be an easy one, so take no chances.", Ace said, as he walked into the elevator, and before it closed, he said, "Have a nice night.", leaving a befuddled Win, 'And what the hell were YOU doing awake?'

***

The next morning, Win was thankfully well-rested, he had no bags under his eyes, or jitters, which made Ace quite relaxed, 'At least it seemed I was able to get him to sleep.'

They, like all mornings, had a light breakfast, and drove to the arena. They sat down on their usual seats, and waited for some time. By now, especially in the freshman group, there were not many people left, there were 2 more fights until the finals in each bracket, so today would be quite quick.

Both Ace and Igor had a fight almost instantly, and Ace focused on his opponent, a boy, one that actually seemed to be able to fight. He went up to the arena where the fight would happen, and waited for his opponent to come, he had to wait for about two minutes, before one of the referees of the fight went up to him, "Hey, sorry for the wait, but it seems like you are through without an issue. Due to a family emergency, your opponent was unable to fight.", Ace kept his face the same, but on the inside, his mind was working overtime, 'Did he surrender? Is this an excuse? Or did something really happen? I swear, if Samantha did something…'

Ace nodded, and thanked the confused referee, he had expected cries or joy, or at least a smile, but all he got was a calm face, and maybe a hint of...disappointment? From what he understood, his opponent was one of the favourites, and yet, the boy did not seem happy with the news at all.

"They told me what happened, a pity, but hey, you get to keep more things to yourself, this guy was a tough one, from what I understand."

"Yeah, it's a pity, but oh well. You done already?", Ace asked, and Igor nodded, smiling.

"It was an easy fight, almost ridiculous, to be honest, he had gotten through just by sheer luck. I stopped that.", he said, almost proud to have defied fate.

"Ok guys, to be honest, you can go, Igor, I know your ribs are not perfect yet, and you luckily had an easy opponent today, but you should still get some more therapy and rest, we need you to be 100 per cent for tomorrow. And you, Ace, go home and remove your bandages, and apply some more ointment, let the scratch breath, if it opened again tomorrow, that would be bad. You can go, just take the car.", Coach said, and they nodded.

"Ok, then, guys, good luck.", Igor said, and Ace nodded. They walked to the car, and after a short drive, they were back to the hotel.

***

As soon as they got back, they each went to do their own thing, Igor went to take a shower, and to get some more cold therapy for his ribs, which were almost fully healed. Ace went to his own room, and removed the bandages. His wound was pretty much healed, all that was left was a long, spindly white mark, which would disappear before the day was over. He put some ointment on it, mostly because it was refreshing on the raw skin, and then applied some new bandages. He then got into a change of clothes, picked up his skateboard, and went to the arcade.

***

When he got there, it was actually full of people, surprisingly, considering it was a weekday and the middle of the morning.

'What the hell is going on?', a thought that resounded on his mind, until he saw the sign, [Poker Day], 'Well fuck, I'm gonna get even richer.'

***

The application process was short, they saw he had plenty of credits on his card, and all he had to do was trade some of them into chips to use on the various tables around.

'Ok, now, from what I read, there should be various cash-ins. I should probably join a cash game, and then see how it goes.', a cash game was essentially a game where you could leave whenever you wanted, of course, the round had to end first. You could buy more chips whenever you wanted, and there was more freedom with regards to betting.

Ace had a good enough stack to go to one of these games. He was nowhere near a good enough poker player anyways, so he would stick to fleecing rich people of their credits. He knew that even if he could read emotions, he did not know enough about the game to make good use of it in a constant manner once he joined a game with more competitive players.

'Well, let's see how this goes, if I lose a lot, I will just farm more tickets on other games, so there is no real loss I guess.'

He walked over to one of the tables and sat down.

The table was of course chosen carefully, there were six other people there already, and while two of them seemed more normal, the other four definitely had some money on them. One of them, a greying man in his late forties, wearing a suit that probably cost as much as a car. The other, an older man, wearing a casual shirt and pants, they were nice, but only Ace spotted the quality threads, as well as the shoes he was wearing. The watch was a pretty good give away as well. Next to him, he also had a hat, one that probably carried a price tag of at least 500 $.

And again, the other two were also wearing expensive outerwear, of course, appearance was not always the best indicator of wealth, but for the most part, it was a good way to get a general idea. That, along with their postures, told Ace he was dealing with some pretty big fish.