Arizhel: Playing to Win

"The game is five-card draw. Nothing wild," the Terran woman proclaimed, running the deck between her fingers in a fairly impressive display of shuffling - it bordered on sleight of hand. Anyone that didn’t know her would probably think that she was stacking the deck. "You mayaswell just hand over your money now, suckers, cause it's gonna be mine either way."

“Only if you cheat, Rish!” one of the others replied, amid a chorus of chuckles and similar friendly jibes. It was a fairly typical Tuesday night aboard the Kismet's Kiss, if a bit quieter than usual. Rish dealt out the cards, then chewed on her lip absently as she looked hers over. A whole lot of nothing, really – the Two and Five of Clubs, the Nine of Diamonds, the King of Hearts, and the Queen of Spades. Still, she felt lucky enough to toss a white chip idly into the center of the table anyway. The other three players did the same.

Starting with the thin, dark-haired man to Rish’s left, they discarded cards. He only got rid of one – a bad sign, that, but then, everyone already knew he had something good, because he grinned as soon as he picked his hand up off the table. Brad always was bad at bluffing. Lila, the blonde sitting across from her, discarded three, as did the red-haired bass player sitting next to her. “Hm,” the Terran mused, looking over her cards, her expression carefully neutral. She then discarded everything but the face cards, and proceeded to dole out new ones as they were needed, starting with Brad.

He grimaced and folded immediately– he'd probably tried to draw to an inside straight and failed miserably, Rish thought to herself as she picked up her cards. She didn’t look at them quite yet, though, instead gauging the other players’ reactions. The little blonde’s brow furrowed and she tossed a red chip out atop the four white ones. Hal did just about the same thing, after a little more thought.

The Terran finally looked at her cards and saw that she’d drawn another King and Queen, leaving her with two pair. Not too shabby considering she’d started out with all of nothing, she observed silently to herself. After looking at her own cards, she peered over them, carefully studying the other players – not their expressions, as she’d already done that. No, she was studying the backs of their cards while pretending to study the players, looking for the subtle imperfections on them that would tell her what they held. That’s the beauty of playing with your own deck, after all. She certainly didn’t have to cheat to win, but it didn’t hurt, either. No harm done, in any case – the money all went to the same place in the end.

Rish tossed a red chip onto the pile, followed by another two.