Chapter 93 - The Game Was Simple

The man was a bit speechless as he heard this but after a minute he only laughed as he spoke, "Your words are quite interesting, young man." 

"I'm glad you find them interesting," Hecathe responded sarcastically but it seemed that nobody else was able to notice the sarcasm in his words, "So do we have a game or not?" 

The two men looked at each other as if they were telepathically communicating with one another and after having done so, they nodded as they came to a mutual agreement and turned to face Hecathe. 

"You have yourself a game," One of the men spoke with a smile as he started shuffling the cards. 

"Since you're placing your watch on the table, let us place the money we won in the last gamble." 

Hecathe immediately shook his head with a sigh as he heard this, "That won't be needed." 

"Eh?" 

"I have a lot of money and I am not playing to win money so you can keep that for yourself," Hecathe explained before he looked at the ring that was worn on the man's finger, "What I want is that ring." 

The ring was the wedding ring of the old woman's husband who was no more and just moments ago, it was gambled off by the adopted son who couldn't care less about the ring. 

"This ring?" The man asked with a frown as he took the ring off, "Are you sure about that?" 

Hecathe didn't need to think about it as he nodded his head without missing a beat, "That ring would do. You two can play together and if either of you win, you can keep the ring and take the watch, but... If I win against both of you, I get to keep the watch and the ring." 

The two old men laughed as they heard the foolish young man challenging them like this. 

The ring was indeed expensive since it was a wedding ring, however, compared to the one-of-a-kind watch that Hecathe had placed on the table, this ring was clearly too inferior of a bet. 

It was a gamble where Hecathe was at a disadvantage since the beginning, however, the two men didn't seem to care too much about it since they would be the ones winning everything in the end. 

"You're daring, young man! Let's play!" One of them commented as he shuffled the cards and placed them on the table. 

"Since you are new, We'll let you handle the cards," The other man spoke as he gestured towards the deck, almost making it look as if he was being humble. 

Hecathe had a small smirk on his face as he heard this and he picked up the deck of cards before he flipped them and started counting them. 

When the two men saw Hecathe doing such a thing, their faces turned white in anger and one of them shouted at Hecathe, "What are you doing?!" 

"Hmm?" Hecathe looked up from the cards as he responded, "Didn't that one over there say that you guys were cheating? I'm just making sure that there are no extra cards." 

"He was clearly lying! Are you calling us a cheater?! Don't play if you don't trust us!" One of the guys clicked his tongue as he shouted, "We also have our pride to hold up, and never in our lives have we ever played unfair with anyone!" 

Hecathe almost wanted to laugh at the man's face as he heard this, but in the end, he was able to control himself as he smiled and nodded before he turned the deck upside down as he started shuffling once again. 

"What? You didn't find anything?!" The other guy scoffed as he commented, sounding quite offended and angry at Hecathe. 

Hecathe nodded his head with a small smile as he spoke, "You were indeed right. I couldn't find anything." 

The two men looked as if they had expected this so they scowled as they folded their arms and openly showed their displeasure towards Hecathe for not believing them. 

"It seems that it was the monkey who was lying," Hecathe added as he side-glanced over to the young man who he was originally here for. 

"Who the hell are you calling a monkey, you #$%@^$#%$&" A string of profanities fell out of the young man's mouth as he kept sitting on his chair and shouted at Hecathe who had called him a monkey. 

Hecathe only chuckled as he heard the man and said nothing in return. 

The two men laughed as they heard the young man barking like a Dog but they also didn't bother commenting on it. 

"So ten cards each?" Hecathe asked as he cautiously glanced up at the two men who nodded as they confirmed it. 

Hecathe started placing the cards down on the table and he placed ten cards in front of each player which made thirty cards in total that were being used. 

The remaining cards were placed on the desk for everyone to see so that they could not be tampered with. 

Hecathe smiled as he picked up the ten cards and took a peek at them. 

The game was simple. 

There were going to be a total of ten rounds and in each round, the players would be asked to place one card down on the table. The one with the smallest number wins and everyone else loses. After each round, they get to place more bets. If a player thinks that he has a better chance of winning with the hand that he had been dealt with then he would place a higher bet, but this could also be done to intimidate the other player who would then be forced to think that his own cards are probably not that great compared to his confident opponents.

This was a game that was quite dependent on luck and a bit dependent on intelligence as well. 

Hecathe had never found an interest in card games but this didn't mean that he hadn't ever seen people playing them. His father was a man who usually loved to play cards in his free time, although he didn't gamble, he was still good at cards, and just from watching him play, Hecathe had learned a lot about cards. 

When he was checking the deck of cards under the excuse of simply checking to see if they were all correct or not, what he was really doing was counting them to see if the cards were 52 in total or not. 

In a normal deck, there were 54 cards and this was including the two jokers that came with each set. 

In most of the games, the joker was always removed which left the players with only 52 cards in total. 

Out of those fifty-two cards, thirty were currently placed in front of the players and the remaining 22 were placed on the table. 

There were four Ace of each suit in a deck and with the game that they were currently playing, the ace was considered as the card with the lowest value. In other words, it would be a card that could make a player win the game. 

Or to be more exact, all Hecathe needed was the Ace of spades in order to win this game since the spade was also considered to be the lowest suit. 

As much as Hecathe hated to say it... He had to admit that he was planning on cheating in order to win this game. 

Hecathe wouldn't have planned to cheat if these two men had been fair since the beginning but since they were the ones to take on the means of cheating first, he would naturally give them a taste of their own medicine. 

The chance of getting the ace of spades in a deck of 52 cards was naturally one in fifty-two so this meant that a person would have 1.92 percent chance of getting such a card if they were to pick only one card from the deck. Since they were picking ten cards, they would naturally have a higher chance. 

There were a total of four aces in a deck and since all the aces were powerless in this particular game, if the opponent didn't have an ace of spades, some other ace would also work to their benefit. 

The chance of getting an ace was 4 in 52 which was a 7.69 percent chance of getting such a card if the player was to only pick a single card from the deck. 

This number looked a bit higher and better, however, it was still just as low and the chance of getting a two of any suit was also the same percentage since there were only four cards with two on them. 

If this game was truly fair then everyone would have the same chances of winning, however, this game was anything other than fair and this meant that these calculations were incorrect. 

The true chances of the other two having an ace were zero because all the four aces were with Hecathe at this moment and this was no luck or coincidence. It was because Hecathe had counted the cards and shuffled them in a manner where he would get all the aces. 

This was the second thing that he did when he flipped the card and casually announced that he was seeing if they were right or not.