the final table & the final countdowns
Unwin spent the time of the Texas holdem games a lot more conservatively than he had at the lower table, bidding cautiously and drawing people out, not drawing out of money but drawing out their reactions to things. Putting what he had heard about each of the contestants to the test. He discovered that Maria Prophetess did know her poker, as much power as she lacked, and as shortsighted she may have been heading to this table with next-to-nothing. That Dee liked risking big, and winning big, but never bluffed when he could have gotten away with it; and that he liked at least a little bit of substance behind his style and only bid big when there was a solid chance of his risk paying off. And that Team Golem had a tell, not in the blank clay face itself but in its robotic body language, and in the way the Kabbalah reacted as they calculated odds.
And that Himsters Keepses was not quite as invincible as they had held him to be. At least not at this tier, though Unwin could see why he had so easily ripped through his competitors on the lower table. The man was disarming, charming, breezy, seemingly modest. He knew how to play people, as well how to play poker, and that's what truly made him dangerous.
It was in Omaha holdem that Unwin tested out the hypotheses that he had formulated, poker in praxis. He built a steady income for himself, winning two of the first four hands of Omaha; knowing exactly when to fold, keeping an eye on the Golem closely to know the odds of any other players' bluffing. Dee pulled behind, and Maria Prophetess pulled ahead, actually winning a hand. Lone Wolf Dreaded Eye bid a little too aggressively, trying to keep his lead, maybe struggling now that the players around him were a little better and he was a little too even with them. By the time the cards of the fifth Omaha hand were dealt, Team Mothman and Lone Wolf Dreaded Eye were neck-in-neck.
Well, alright, Unwin was behind by, a little bit. Nothing that couldn't be covered in a single exceptional hand though.
Like maybe this one.
The first round of bidding. Mothman pushed in 100. Everyone called.
The flop was revealed. King of diamonds, 8 of clubs, 9 of diamonds. Dreaded Eye, the first to bid this round, came out strongly. Mary Prophetess called that too.
Unwin flicked his eyes over to the Golem, taking the creature's entire body language in in a single split-second. Keepses had to be bluffing. It wasn't outside of his playstyle to do so.
Unwin exhaled slowly through his nose, calming himself down. This was it. A chance to pull ahead. The last hand of the hold 'em games, the last hand with unlimited bidding. And the hand was pretty good. Really good. A lot of strong possibility, two pair already between the board and his pocket.
Unwin pushed all his chips into the pot. All in. He didn't even have to say it out loud. It looked much cooler when he didn't.
The Dreaded Eye looked at Unwin, into those owly eyes of the Flatwoods Monster outfit, with a smirk on his face. He seemed to know exactly what it was that Unwin was doing. Was Keepses just feinting, not bluffing at all and forcing Unwin's hand? Or was that sideward glance toward him just another part of the Dreaded Eye's winning personality? That cat was out of the bag now, either way; Unwin had already pushed all in.
Now it was up to the other players to act, the raised bid now going around the table once more. Were they going to let him take it? Would they think him bluffing, and call? Those who had less than him, like Team Dee and Team Mary Prophetess, would have to push all in themselves. Those who had more just had to call, or match his bid.
Dee pushed all in himself (interesting.) The Golem folded, Mary Prophetess folded. And Keepses called.
A player having gone all in, the hand immediately proceeded to the showdown, the turn and river cards being flipped over, and the best hand selected and revealed. Between the community cards and Unwin's pocket, he had a full house consisting of two Kings and one 9 from the board, and the 9 and King of clubs from Unwin's hole. Keepses also had a full house, having two Jacks in his pocket and one on the board, and the two kings on the board- kings full of 9s was better than jacks full of kings, which means that Unwin had won the showdown out of the two of them.
But the showdown wasn't just between the two of them. Dee had also pushed all in... There was a gasp from the audience as Dee revealed two cards from his hole, to make up his full hand. A straight flush, the second-best hand possible. His queen of diamonds filled in the space between the jack and king of diamonds; his ten of diamonds filled in the space between that and the 9 on the board. If ace had been high instead of king, he would have had a royal flush.
It was a truly stunning hand.
But it meant that Team Mothman had lost everything.
Dee was now back in the running, a little ahead of Dreaded Eye from the massive pot he had swept in. The Kabbalah leaned into each other's ears in the dimness of the seats down below, probably whispering how risky such a maneuver had been, and how they would never have gone on with it.
Unwin stared blankly ahead, eyes focused on nothing, until they finally settled on focusing on the interior eyes of the Flatwoods Monster owl mask. Stupid thing, gets no peripheral vision, makes it too obvious when I'm turning my head to watch someone closely. I have too many tells. Keepses really was bluffing. Dee was incredibly damn lucky.
Unwin was not, of course, out of the game quite yet. He sat quite still as he considered the next steps that needed to take place.
The game was open stakes. Team Mothman could purchase more chips for itself at any time. It was how Mary Prophetess had gained a little leeway for herself, kept herself in running shape in this game here at the final table.
There was a steady trickle of income that had come in from the clew, maybe not so much to jump back to the place where he'd been, or at least not yet. It would require squeezing up the last of the Tooth Fairy's fortune in a way that would be dangerous, magically too powerful, not slipping by under the radar as they'd been doing, but it was possible to open the faucet a little bit. They'd been trying to "lowball their snowball," as Moone had put it, to avoid all suspicion, and this much power to squeeze the Tooth Fairy's fortunes harder was maybe a little too conspicuous, Tooth Fairy-bestowed boon or no. If they attracted any attention, any at all, they'd be out, even deeper than they already were out. Kicked out of Babel for life, with their kneecaps broken, if they weren't killed outright.
But it was the only chance to stop Lone Wolf Dreaded Eye. He pushed away from the table, and went to conversate with the rest of his team.
It didn't attract any attention. None that Unwin heard. Maybe nobody was looking for it, or maybe Miracle was just that good.
A full round of Razz passed by without Unwin playing. Just sitting, letting the clew build up fortune, steadily, but as fast as possible. There was already a pool from before, from opening the faucet a little wider; by the third hand of Razz, they had doubled it, and let it rise a bit more.
Keepses was building himself back up, without Team Mothman there to specifically counter him. But deciding when to reenter the game came down to timing. With the stud games requiring an ante, he couldn't sit out waiting for a good hand. The timing had to be between when the fortune coffers built up to the maximum, where the trade-off could be greatest and he would make more money bidding and winning in poker than he could just building up interest in an automated system. It was an economic concern, primarily. What was the risk, what was the reward.
Team Mothman bought itself back into the tournament, to get there just in time to play a little bit of Seven card stud. Unwin's game. Lone Wolf Dreaded Eye had amassed a lot of poker chips for himself. Dee had played steadily, most of his gambles paying off, and he was now in second place, though behind by quite a bit. Golem and Mary Prophetess were about tied for third place, a fair curve of the bell behind him.
When Mothman entered the table again, they had enough money, draining the clew to the bottom, to get out ahead of Team Dee.
Any other player could also have bought themselves more chips, to buff themselves up, but everyone had already sunk veritable fortunes into this game. Unwin stayed steadily on. And the levels evened out a bit, again. The placeholders remained the same, but a lot, lot closer.
At the end of the penultimate hand of the game, things were relatively level chips-wise, with no clear winner, not yet. That's not to say that it was anyone's game, but the first, second, and third place players could conceivably all come out as the final victor of the poker game, and thus the final victor of the auction.
In the game show Jeopardy, the final round, Final Jeopardy, consists of a sealed-bid bidding round and an answer to be questioned. Those who provide the correct question for the answer provided make the amount they bid, those who get it wrong lose the amount they bid. No contestant knows the amount of money their fellow contestants are going to bid, but they do have knowledge of their opponents' resource pool, how much money they've made questioning answers thus far. The economically rational thing to do if you're playing Jeopardy and come out ahead by the time Final Jeopardy rolls around is to bid less than the amount of money that would cause you to lose should you question incorrectly, if the person behind you bid everything they had in an attempt to double their own winnings were they to question correctly. Cliff Clavin from Cheers bid all he had and lost, when he was so far ahead that he could have bid nothing at all and still come out on top.
But here, in this auction, this metaphorical Jeopardy, the question was obvious, it was supplied as part of the category. There was no reason not to bid the entirety of the money amassed thus far, there would be no final table to go on to after this one. The only hope for Team Mothman to win came down to the final hand.
Tooth Fairy kind of looked like Alex Trebek, come to think of it... only without a moustache, for some reason?
Everyone knew that the fate of who came out on top in the final auction, would come down to the final hand. That's why the Tooth Fairy had selected a high-low game, of course, a split pot before the final round and the final auction. It made things very interesting. In this game, assuming everyone's end goal really was the NOC list instead of walking away with whatever winnings they had amassed, the true winner was the one who had a winning margin by the end of the last hand. It was zero-sum, really.
And so the final hand. Everything leading up to this- could you keep a cool head? Could you pay enough attention to notice the others' tells, could you avoid showing your own tells, could you even keep your hands from shaking in the knowledge that this was the final moment and everything was coming down to this? Unwin was dressed in his cryptid outfit, which didn't leave many tells in the face area, though it was flatteringly form-fitting enough to leave his body language entirely readable to those who were paying attention.
He could either go high, or low. The window of his flop revealed an 8 card, and though that 8 card didn't have to go into his final hand of five, he had another 8 in his pocket. Not the best pair, not the worst. If he bid on this hand, everyone knew that he would probably have to go high. His other card wasn't that great for going high, and it's always best to start gunning for the low; his pair of eights he could take or leave, for right now, but it was so easy to get sunk at this point.
8 of clubs, 3 of diamonds, the 8 of diamonds as the door card. Two diamonds in hand also meant that he could gun for flush, but it was another longshot.
Unwin bid confidently. The bidding being fixed-limit, it wasn't difficult, since he was bidding on this hand anyway.
The Golem folded. This late in the game, one last shot at coming on top, who would want to fold? Everyone would want to take their chances, high or low, unless they were in a comfortable enough lead, let the others collapse over each other. The lowest player, Mary Prophetess, did have an ace showing in her window; if she won this hand high, with no valid low hand, she still wouldn't come out on top but her taking the pot would have been enough to disrupt the current leader players.
Or maybe the golem had just calculated that it was futile by this point, no way to win the NOC list and no purpose to keep bidding, not even to act as a spoiler.
There was a point of no return, where you could decide to cut your losses, not lose anything and hope the person you're in the race against loses... Unwin could have folded, there; the ante was negligible enough compared to the distance between him and the Dreaded Eye. If you suspect your odds might be good, then... it'd be difficult.
The game continued. Maria Prophetess folded on her fourth street. Maybe she'd realized there was no way she'd been going to win at the auction. Maybe the stress was getting to her, and she'd decided it wasn't worth it. It was down to Team Dee, Lone Wolf Dreaded Eye, and Unwin himself. Dee had a queen and a 10 exposed, not bad; the way he bid either meant he knew how to hide desperation, or he was sitting on something pretty. Maybe a second queen in his pocket. Maybe two aces.
Either way, Dee was probably gunning for the high pot. If Dee took high, and neither Unwin nor Dreaded Eye qualified to take low, he would be able to pull into first place himself, with the chips Maria Prophetess had tossed in. That was, fine. An angry warlord from a long line of alchemists getting his hand on the NOC list, still better than Dreaded Eye getting his hands on it; Team Dee had been making a lot of promises behind people's backs, severely limiting what he'd be able to do with the information contained in the list.
If Unwin took low and Dee took high, Keepses taking nothing, Unwin could come into first, with Keepses coming in a close second ahead of Dee. This would also be possible if Unwin took high and Dee took low, but if Lone Wolf Dreaded Eye took any of this pot, his winning margin was wide enough for him to come out on top.
All of these assumptions were predicated on the idea that no one fold. If Keepses folded, that was another way for Unwin to emerge victorious.
But he wasn't going to do that.
Fifth street passed. Then sixth street. Cards were dealt, information was added, odds were calculated and recalculated.
The river. A two. Of diamonds. That gave Unwin a flush, five diamond cards. The others saw three of his four face-up cards as being diamonds, so they knew it would be a possibility that he'd have such a flush; the more diamonds they were hiding, the lower they'd know the odds to be. A flush is a decently high hand, certainly higher than a pair of 8s. But it wasn't an instant win condition or anything. Especially not against Dee. Maybe the alchemist didn't have anything. Maybe he was just bluffing.
Nobody folded. The final showdown, the three players holding firm and squaring off against each other from across the felt. Time to reveal. It seemed like it had taken forever, but now seemed like it was too soon, like the entire game had only lasted an instant, and the new eternity was the reveal of the hidden cards, the moment of their flipping over stretching out eternally.
Unwin's eyes were dull and watery, under the flaming strigine eyes of the suit. He regarded the odds of outcome. It was assumed that the Dreaded Eye would bid his all, the way Gef or Mothman would. He was a lone wolf with no backup, so his motivations were unclear. But he had made no deals with any of the other teams. Maybe he just wanted to win the poker part, play the best he could, fair and square, and not care about the Necronomicon at all. His Tooth Fairy-provided Boon, the Gift of Night, provided no advantage to him in-game, and seeing as how he wouldn't use it on any of his lackeys, because he didn't have any!, it was a plausible motivation.
Unwin snapped to with this thought, and looked down at his own hand, with the diamond flush. Team Dee's high hand was three of a kind queens, the river not enough to push that up to a full house. Unwin realized that he had taken the high. The second half of the pot was shoveled over to him, and all poker chips were tabulated into the pools that the players could enter into the final auction with.
Unwin bid his entire pool of money.
And so did Keepses.
Cruel irony, the way that Maria Prophetess had made it to the final table by spending the amount that Team Punch had bid; so Lone Wolf Dreaded Eye won the auction, spending the amount that Unwin had bid. It was the final twist of the knife. Very dramatic.
Tooth Fairy was good like that.
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