Before, just after the first completed game, Adam had created a little theory.

Sure, the first game had not been a full win, with them sharing the pot, in the end. But it had been a win to be sure. From that point on, Troy had been more upbeat. More vocal, one could even call it.

Yes, his mood had been diminished, after learning that he had not technically won, but had gotten an equal combination with Esme. It didn't hold him down for long, though.

Troy had been more outright, in his words. Instead of simply answering questions directed at him, he would try to join in on active discussions. While his activity in these discussions were mostly agreements on statements that he liked to be on the side with, it was an active discussion nonetheless.

Troy had also been more vocal of his so-called natural talent in the game of fine poker. Adam did understand that this might be necessary to explain some of his peculiar behaviour. Yet he would have thought it better if Troy decided to run it by him before saying such things.

And, that talent of his might not last as long, as Troy thought it would. Statistically, they had been lucky. From the perspective of seeing through deceit, they had been very lucky. Neither Darlow nor Esme had hidden their intentions too well. Adam attributed this to the game having only just started, and the group not yet in their normal mindset.

He had even theorized that their early win would have seemed easy, in comparison to later rounds.

And, oh, how Adam was correct.

In the first few games after the first, Troy's mood had hit a constant high note. He believed himself mighty. He did not even looking at his cards. Troy just flashed them up, so Adam could view them, and then left him to do the playing.

In the meanwhile, Troy would partake in nearly every, however brief, conversation. Adam didn't mind this too much. With Troy not knowing his cards, and acting like a royal aristocrat no matter what, it helped in giving them a nearly impenetrable mask. Not one of silence, but one of white noise.

Adam also theorized that this playstyle of theirs actually caused the level of difficulty to rise. While the first few plays had been casual in nature, with not much thought put into actions, an atmosphere of tense seriousness quickly emerged.

Yet, Troy still thought himself unstoppable. At least he acted like it.

After a few, slightly more serious games, this attitude led to a dive for the opposite.

Through the first fifteen games, where they had played mildly serious at most, Troy and Adam had won four times. With the first and the second, they had won through observation of others' playstyle and prediction of their combination values. In their third and last win, they had won through pressuring the others out with high bets.

As implied, that had worked a total of two times, before the others wizened up to that special, little tactic of Adam's.

And all of that had happened before they even began trying to actively win.

Originally, after seeing their individual playstyles for the first time, Adam had made a few observations about Charlie's earlier advice.

He had called them all veterans of poker, with each of them having played the game for decades. Adam readily believed that part. They were much older than the regular starting age of gamblers, so it would make sense that they had several years of experience.

Then he said, they all had unstoppable masks of iron, and Adam began doubting the estimations of the group's abilities. Yes, some degree of skill was to be expected after such a long time of playing, but a player with no indications to their thoughts was virtually impossible, right?

No human knew all of their tics and twitches. Every single being had unconscious reactions. It was in their genes to have them. One couldn't change that, with just willpower.

These thoughts solidified themselves in the beginning. Sure, the body language was scarce and hard to notice, but it was still there. Nothing could be completely destroyed. There was literal law about that. It could only be redistributed

Yet, after playing with this group for a short while, Adam felt it was time to retreat on that opinion. These people… no, they couldn't be called that. These entities showed nothing. The automation showed more emotion, and it was physically incapable of doing so!

“Bet”, Charlie coldly stated, gently putting in thirty-five tokens.

The dealer put another card on the community hand, letting Francis move the game along.

For the last three games now, Adam had automatically folded. Them winning or not was no longer important to Adam. It was a secondary goal, at the most.

No, what he wanted to know was this; how could he read these people?

Earlier, in the last two games, he had thought that he had found one uncontrollably reaction that Zep made, when she was nervous, due to bad cards.

Every time that she decided on folding, because of no available combinations, she would scratch the right side of her neck. She repeated it in the next game too, while laying the cards with the backside down, allowing Adam to see their value.

He had been proud of this find. Well, until he saw that she did it when she was out of the game too. Adam had Troy ask about it, and she just answered that she had gotten a bug bite earlier in the day. And, that the cream had worn off.

A failed find. And it wasn't getting any better. Soon, Adam would have to partake in a round or two. For more than the beginning, this time, or the others would get-

“I fold”, Darlow said, throwing down his cards as gently as one could. Adam stopped in his thoughts, to hear the voices more clearly. “Hey, Troy.”

That catched Adam's attention. Casual talk, where the question had not been asked outright, hadn't happened in the last eleven games.

'Answer, please.', Adam sent along. Before, Troy would have answered, without even being asked. But now, all his earlier ambition and aspirations seemed to have deflated. Adam could relate to a degree. Troy was likely sad, about the difficulty of the test. This was meant to be challenging to Adam, and not impossible.

Or… maybe, it was, and Adam just wasn't told. He could never be sure.

“What is it?” Troy politely asked.

“You do realise that you can fake having good cards, right?” Darlow asked right back. His voice wasn't condescending, but curious instead. Adam would be too. To the others, Troy had shown himself to be an ambitious, slightly skilled beginner. It wasn't expected of him to be an expert on it at all, but some degree of skill was expected. This would include faking having good cards.

Together, this meant that Troy would have to make an educated answer here. Something, that Adam wasn't too sure that he could. Sure, Troy may know all the tricks, but that clearly didn't mean he could formulate them vocally very well.

'State this, with no personal formulation changes; Well, now I definitely can't do it. If I change any of my behaviour due to your input, it would give you a better chance of predicting my future actions. And, maybe, this strategy of mine is to just confuse you all. The next time I don't immediately fold, you will think that my cards are just that great.', Adam sent to Troy, with the hope that the importance of these instructions was conveyed correctly.

They did, with Troy performing it almost flawlessly. Adam shouldn't have taken Troy's short-term memory for eidetic.

“And, maybe this strategy is just to confuse you, so you will think my cards are incredibly good when I don't fold them at the start,” Troy ended the answer with. The meaning was a little screwed. But. the general sense of the words did seem to be conveyed correctly. The tone could have been a little more confident, though.

“Eh,” Darlow said. “That's fair. Just… try to bet more. This game needs to come to an end at some time.”

Yet another hint, that Troy and Adam needed to step up their game. At the least, this solidified Adam's intent to play the round, for some time, no matter what cards they had.

The others getting bored, with their tactics was not a preferred outcome. It was much lower on that list.

The current game quickly progressed, ending with Esme winning the hefty sum of three hundred and fifty tokens. Which was incredibly good for her, since she had been running a bit low compared to the others.

The game went on, though, and the private cards were dealt. Earlier, Troy had without Adam's input decided to just wait for both cards to be dealt, before taking a glance at it.

When both were given out, Troy took his customary flash-glance, likely not even bothering to take a look at them himself.

…

Adam's mind nearly blanked itself with excitement. Real odds were now in the playing-field.

Like all the other games, this started with as low stakes as usual. The highest they had come in the first round, had been a trio of tens. Even that, had been some weird experiment, which Adam had wanted to perform.

Not that he explained the goal of it, to Troy, or anything. No, he was just fine with informing Troy that he was getting something out of it, without having the decency to explain what, after the fact.

He may have sounded angry about it, but Troy didn't mind that too much. From earlier, he had learned a good-sized lesson in modesty. If you don't know what you're talking about, don't brag about it. And don't brag about talents, if you aren't sure that those talents will last.

But, Troy had been sure about his plan is a success. He had won a stand-off against veterans of the game! Well, Adam had been doing the heavy lifting of the whole operation, but that wasn't what he had been so excited about. No, it was the fact that the whole thing had been his idea!

Oh, and how big a success it had been. In the start, compared to the others, they were absolutely dominating with the number of wins.

Troy would have preferred that mentality to last.

The others grew better, and down it, all went. And, Troy wasn't too sure about his plan any more.

For the last few games, Adam had definitely been of the same attitude as Troy. They were losing, and they both knew it. Time was the only factor in how long it would take for them to lose it all. Troy's reputation in the newly introduced group was likely already falling. It just wasn't official yet.

'Raise it to fifty.', Adam sent to Troy.

Oh? It was already time to bet?

Troy put in the customary twen- Wait, no.

He paused in his movements. He had already taken ahold of to tens and was ready to put them into the middle.

What did Adam just say?

'You're stalling. Don't. Throw in a single token, that is worth fifty.', Adam quickly sent.

Should he just throw in the two tens in, anyway? Troy already had them in his hand… No, that would ruin his chances even further. It was best to just listen to that voice of reason, which resided in his little, dumbhead.

Troy put down the two tens in their original place and threw in a fifty instead.

What was Adam planning? They weren't doing the 'just fold immediately' strategy anymore. That was clear. Was this just another reaction observation? Troy felt he would know soon enough.

You know what? This time, he would pay a little more attention to this poker game of theirs.

With the initial betting round done, the automation put out the first three cards.

Starting it all up was nine of diamonds. Doing his regular sweep of the people, Troy saw nothing that would indicate anything. Not that it was supposed to, of course. That part was left for Adam.

The next card was six of clubs. Troy still didn't know if these cards had any significance to him personally. He hadn't paid too much attention to what Adam and he got.

Troy needed to take a peek at those cards when the next game began. It would make it more interesting for him, to be honest. The others had not spoken too much, since they started getting all into the game.

A shame, if anybody would have liked to ask Troy about. It just made it harder for Adam and more boring for Troy.

He could start up some conversation himself… but, he wouldn't even dare to try. Nobody, and definitely not Troy, could say, what that would cause.

And the last card that would be shown this round, was revealed to be… another six. The six of diamonds, if one wanted to be all fancy about it.

That created a pair in the community hand. If somebody had another six, they would be having a master-class hand. If they had another, bringing it up to four total six's, they would be winning, with pretty much no doubt about it.

This thought almost made Troy check those cards of his. The chances of him having them were low, but there was still a small chance of it. And, don't call him a gambler, but Troy was liking those odds, no matter how small they were.

With those three cards all dealt, it was time to begin the next betting round. Like the last time that Troy had put any attention on it, the one to begin was Francis.

But Francis did not throw anything like he usually did.

When Troy put his focus on his face, he saw that Francis wasn't even looking at his cards or the community pool of bets. Not even at his own casino tokens.

No, he was looking away from all that.

Francis was staring right into Troy. Not a passing glance, meant as a casual observation of the group around him. If it was, Troy would see him move to the others with his eyes.

This was Francis having a full eyed focus on Troy's face.

Their eyes crossed each other. Troy looked further down on Francis' face. The gesture is not mirrored.

“Troy”, Francis said, out of the blue, his voice just as stoic as Adam's. But, somehow, it still had a layer of seriousness to it.

“Yes?” Troy asked.

“You're cheating.”