“Come on, Tony, there’s no smoking gun, just his word against the tournament director’s. I thought Rufus might say during the interview that he saw this other player marking cards or stealing chips, but he didn’t say anything like that. Quoting some obscure mathematical equation isn’t grounds to say you were cheated.”
“It is in poker,” Valentine said.
There was a pause on the line. Valentine found a pad and pencil on his desk, and jotted down the number of players in the World Poker Showdown, then determined the likelihood of one player beating seven other players within an hour based upon the Poisson equation. Although his formal education had ended in high school, he’d become schooled in statistics and probability when he’d started policing Atlantic City’s casinos, and as a result understood the math behind the games as well as anyone. Finished, he stared at the long number on the pad. Rufus had been dead on: six billion to one.
“Would you mind explaining?” Bill said.
Poker was not a big casino game, and not a lot of people in the gambling business understood it. He said, “Sure. Poker isn’t like other casino games, where the players gamble against the house, and the house always has an edge. In those games, the house is expected to win.”
“I’m with you so far.”
“Good. In poker, every player has the same chance, especially at the beginning of a tournament, when players start with an equal number of chips. Now, the odds of an amateur beating seven other players out of all their chips within the first hour is off the chart.”
“But it could happen,” Bill said.
“Maybe, but not necessarily,” Valentine said.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means it could happen, but probably won’t, especially in a tournament like the World Poker Showdown. There are a number of reasons. First, people always play tight on the first day, because they don’t want to get bounced out. Second, amateurs tend to be picked on by pros or more experienced players, so the chance of an amateur knocking out seven other players is slim.”
“Maybe the guy got lucky,” Bill interrupted. “That’s a big part of the game.”
“I’ll agree with you there.”
“So, the amateur who beat Rufus Steele got lucky.”
“That would be the natural assumption,” Valentine said, “only the Poisson distribution rules that out in this situation.”
“How?”
“When applied to gambling, the main assumption of the Poisson distribution is that the chance of winning is randomly distributed. Which means that every individual has an equal chance. For example, if someone won a million-dollar jackpot on a slot machine, that’s luck. Right?”
“Of course.”
“However, if someone won two million-dollar jackpots on the same machine within an hour, that’s probably cheating. You agree?”
Bill let out an exasperated breath. “Yeah, probably.”
“The same thing is true in poker. An amateur might beat a guy at his table out of all his chips in an hour. However, the chances of him beating two guys is unlikely, and the odds of him beating everyone is exactly what Rufus said during his interview.”
“Six billion to one?”
“Yeah, give or take a few thousand.”
“So the amateur was cheating.”
“That would be my guess.”
“You want the job?” Bill asked.
“What job?”
“I want to hire you to figure out how this amateur beat those seven players at his table. I’ll send you the surveillance tapes, plus the footage Gloria Curtis’s cameraman shot. Study them, and tell me what the guy’s doing. Then we can bar him from the tournament, and everyone will be happy.”
“Does Celebrity know you’re hiring me?”
“No,” Bill said. “They haven’t been very cooperative. Between you and me, I think they’d just like this whole thing to go away.”
Valentine thought back to the threatening phone call he’d received from the suit at Celebrity. Most casinos tried to expose cheating, and get the cheats barred or arrested. Celebrity was taking the opposite approach, and doing everything possible to pretend it didn’t exist. It didn’t smell right, and he stared at the Celebrity playing card on his desk.
“Who’s the suspected cheat?” Valentine asked.
“An amateur named Skip DeMarco.”
Skip DeMarco was the same player that Gerry had said was in Las Vegas using Jack Donovan’s poker scam. Maybe he could nail DeMarco, and give his son something to smile about.
“You want the job or not?” Bill asked.
“I want it,” Valentine said.
A minute later, Bill’s e-mail appeared on his computer screen with the surveillance tapes of Celebrity’s poker room and the footage shot by Gloria Curtis’s cameraman attached.
He watched the poker tape first. Celebrity’s surveillance cameras were digital, and the tape’s resolution was crystal clear. Eight men in their late twenties sat at a table along with a professional female dealer, who wore a red bow tie and starched white shirt.
Skip DeMarco sat in the center of the table. He wore purple shades and stared into space as he played. The game was Texas Hold ’Em, with each player dealt two cards to start. Instead of peeking at his cards like the other players, DeMarco brought his cards up to his nose, and stared at them. He enjoyed belittling his opponents and trumpeting his own wins. Had it been a private game, someone would have silenced him, either through words or a request to step outside. But this was a tournament, where anything was permissible. By the hour’s end, he had everyone’s chips.
Valentine paused the tape and got a diet soda from the rattling fridge in the kitchen. The fridge had come with the house, and he’d been meaning to buy a new one, only it still worked, and he’d never believed in getting rid of things simply because they were old. Back in his study, he resumed watching the tape.
Everything about the game looked on the square. DeMarco played smart, and got good cards when he needed them. Maybe the odds of him beating the other players were six billion to one, but sometimes those things happened. He decided to play Gloria Curtis’s tape, and see if it revealed anything.
Curtis had interviewed DeMarco at the end of the first day of the tournament, right after DeMarco had beaten Rufus Steel. DeMarco was tall and good-looking, and she held the mike up to his face.
“I’m speaking with today’s Cinderella story of the tournament, Skip ‘Dead Money’ DeMarco, an amateur player from New Jersey. Although this is your first tournament, I’m told you’ve played poker for many years.”
“I got my chops in Atlantic City,” he said, holding a beer to his chest.
“Can you tell us where the name Dead Money comes from?”
“It’s what the old-timers call amateurs.”
“Well, it looks like you knocked one of those old-timers out today,” Curtis said. “Rufus ‘the Thin Man’ Steele wasn’t very happy with how you beat him.”
“Too bad,” he said.
“Rufus claims you had an unfair advantage.”
“Try disadvantage. I’m legally blind, and have been my whole life,” he said. “Try playing poker and not being able to see your opponents’ faces.”
“What about Rufus’s claim?”
“Rufus Steele is past his prime. I’m starting a petition to have his name changed.”
“To what?”
“The Old Man.”
“How far do you think you’ll go in the tournament?”
“All the way,” he said.
The camera switched to show DeMarco at the poker table, raking in the chips. Valentine froze the tape and stared at DeMarco’s face. One thing that hadn’t diminished as he’d gotten older was his memory; he’d never seen this guy play poker in Atlantic City.