Volume 1: The Demented Adventurers Chapter 1: Gambler at Heart, Tactician at Mind

Those who play video games or gamble understand the frustrations and thrills that come with a randomly decided outcome, based solely on the roll of a dice.

Garett was one of these people.

A slim man wearing a baseball cap and a plain white t-shirt strode down the dimly lit street of a college boulevard. Large Brick buildings surrounded the street, all of them either classroom or administrative buildings for the college.

He reached into his jean pockets, and pulled out his cell phone. Upon checking his text messages, he saw 1 unread message.

From: Daniel

[Hey, man! Its been a while since I last saw you. The economics class was really rough- I gotto thank you for helping me through it. I know you're majoring in mathematics, and have an interest in probability. I was invited to a certain casino by a good friend of mine- and you wouldn't believe the rewards they're offering! Give me a call if you're interested.]

Fishy.

This was the first thing Garett thought.

The higher the rewards are, the greater the chance is that the game was rigged from the start.

Garett had no interest in rigged games. He was intrigued by true gambling- the use of strategy and wit to maximize ones probability of winning- however without any cheating involved. In the end, he loved the thrill of not being guaranteed to win- no matter how hard one plotted and schemed. No matter how well one read an opponent.

The absolute condition of a real gamble was that one did not know for certain how things would play out, even if they had the entire game in the palm of their hands. All players were equal when it came to the roll of a dice.

Well versed tacticians could make it so that there was a 90% chance of their victory being assured. However, that 10% still remained. This could be due to an unexpected action by another person, or simply by an unlucky draw.

Garett was such a tactician, and losing- for someone like Garett- was almost enjoyable.

Especially so if it was due to something that he couldn't do anything but shrug it off and say "That's how the die rolls."

Cheating was another matter. If one cheated, this took away the thrill of losing. However...

"If one were to cheat against me... all I would need to do is notice it so that I can level the playing field... and once more leave things up to chance..."

Garett thought this with a chuckle. He took off his baseball cap to reveal his short cut hair, and he wiped the sweat off his brow with it.

He remembered back to his first card game against his father, when he was only 7 years old.

A young Garett sat at the redwood dining table, and his father- a tall man with short black hair, dealt two cards swiftly as they slid across the table to where Garett sat.

His father gave Garett a toothy smile, despite his rough appearance. He looked at Garett kindly, and spoke with a grizzle voice.

"Take a peek at your cards, Garett. Don't let me see them. If the card is a Jack, a Queen, or a King, then its worth 10 points. If its a number, then its worth as many points as that number, except for an ace. If the card is an ace, you get to choose whether its worth 1 point or 11 points."

His father explained the rules of blackjack to him.

"The goal is to get 21 points. If you want another card, you say 'hit', and I'll give you one more. If not, say pass and I won't give you any. The thing is, if your cards go past 21 points- you automatically lose, so be careful about whether you try to get more cards if you're close to 21 already."

A normal 7 year old would just be learning how to perform addition. Garett was already teaching himself to do basic algebra at this age, and calculating probability was no issue for him.

Before looking at his cards, he ran a calculation in his head.

4 of 13 cards will give him 10 points, and 1 of them would give him 11.

5/13 chance that he would get 1 of these cards.

25/169 chance that he would get both

This was greater than a 1 in 7 chance.

Without even looking at his cards, Garett declared boldly

"Pass"

His father looked somewhat disappointed.

"Perhaps he isn't old enough to be able to figure out a game like this... ah well. I tried."

"30%", Garett stated.

"Eh?" His father looked at him with an odd glare.

"The chance of getting at least 18 points on the first draw is roughly 30%. That's a gamble I'm willing to take."

Garett's eyes looked with excitement towards his father, who crept up a smile on his face and began to laugh.

"This kid..."

His father took a peek at his own cards.

An Ace and a 6.

There was almost no reason not to hit.

His cards currently added up to 17 if he counted the ace as 11, but even if he overdosed and got 10 points, he would still have the same 17 as before. If he was lucky and got a low card between 1 and 4, he would be closer to 21- should he get a card from 5-6, he would have 12 or 13 points- from which he would have a reasonable chance at being able to regain his status with another hit.

"I'll take a hit", he exclaimed as he gave himself another card.

Flipping the card, he noticed a Jack.

"Looks like things backfired, but I can't risk going any further. Either way, my boy didn't even look at his cards. Relying on pure chance like that is nothing more than a fools errand."

"Pass"

The two flipped their cards, revealing that Garett had a Queen and an 8.

18 points.

"It seems that I won that gamble, father."

His father laughed again- this time at himself for taking the game so seriously- only to be foiled by pure luck.

"It seems that skill can only set up the playing field... the rest is simply up to chance..."

Garett remembered this game as if it were yesterday.

Ever since that day, he spent his childhood researching all types of different games that involved probability. Dice games, card games, board games, RPGs, tactical strategy games, you name it.

If there was a chance that he could play perfectly and still lose, or play like an amateur and still win, he had played it.

"I suppose I can check out this game that Daniel was offering to play."

Daniel was a business major. They were not particularly good friends, however Garett had helped him a great deal in a number of classes. Anything that required one to be good at math, Garett could breeze by.

However there was something that always bothered Garett about Daniel, and that was that he was an obvious cheater.

Him and his friends would be taking the tests in the enormous lecture halls, where the professors could never be able to keep an eye on the hundreds of students testing all at once.

"Twitch-eye Daniel"

Was what his friends called him.

Daniel had an odd quirk about him- he could control the movement of a single one of his eyes independent of the other. The doctors had misinterpreted this as having a twitchy eye, and so he was able to produce a medical note claiming as such.

However, this was not the case.

Daniel would always be looking towards the papers of his friends, and to collectively share the answers with his friends, he would look at Garett's paper with his left- non twitchy eye.

He would then use various signals with his twitchy right eye to share information with others on his right side. In multiple choice tests, this was extremely easy, however they even managed to figure things out like this for free response.

Their signals were as such: Say the answer was 802. If the first digit was between 5 and 9, he would twitch his eye downwards the number of times until the number was reached. 1 Twitch meant 1 less than 10- or 9, 5 twitches meant 5 less than 10, or 5. Similarly, he would twitch his eye upwards for 1-4 the number of times that the number occurred.

If the number was 0, he would twitch his eye to the left, and if the digit had finished, he would twitch his eye to the right.

For 802, he would do this combination: 2 down, 1 right, 1 left, 1 right, 2 up, 1 right.

2 down and 1 right symbolized the 8, 1 left and 1 right symbolized the 0, and 2 up and 1 right symbolized the 2.

As such, Garett had somewhat disliked Daniel. Garett studied and worked hard to receive the results he did, and yet what was he going to do? Snitch on Daniel for copying his work? Of course not. He would become the laughing stock of other students if he did so. No, even more so, perhaps the teachers would only rebuke him for doing so.

He instead took a more personal approach, and made attempts to personally tutor Daniel. If one could get the answers on their own, there was no need to cheat after all.

However, this was usually in vain, as Daniel would simply sit through their teaching sessions bored, and play games on his computer until Garett just decided to leave it be.

"I didn't want to remember those memories, but perhaps this is a chance for me to defeat Daniel and show him that my hard studying wasn't for nothing..."

Garett smiled as he imagined the scenario playing itself out. He could win the high class rewards- however he was still concerned about what would happen to the losers.

"I suppose the worst that could happen is that they lose their money on hand. Nobody is stupid enough to go to a casino with money that they loaned from someone else... unless you're a gambling addict, that is."

Garett sent a text back.

[Sure. Could you get me the details?]

There was no way that Garett could have predicted the outcome of this gamble, and who.... or what he would become as a result of it.

Because to Garett right now, that much was undetermined.