Drew Karpyshyn - Darth Bane - Path of Destruction

Des didn't care. He didn't play sabacc for fun. It was a job, same as working the mines. A way to earn credits and pay off ORO so he could leave Apatros behind forever.

Two of the soldiers pushed away from the table, their credits cleaned out. Their seats were soon filled by miners from the day shift. The lure of the massive sabacc pot was enough to draw them in, despite their reluctance to go up against Des.

Another hour passed and the senior officers, the lieutenant and the commander, finally packed it in. They, too, were replaced by miners with visions of hitting one good hand and cashing in the unclaimed sabacc pot. The Republic soldiers who stuck around, like the ensign who had first challenged Des, must have had deep, deep pockets.

With the constant influx of new players and new money, Des was forced to change his strategy. He was up several hundred credits; he had enough of a cushion built up that he could afford to lose a few hands if he had to. Now his only concern was protecting the sabacc pot. If he didn't have a hand he thought he could win with, he'd come up in the first few turns. He wasn't going to give anyone else a chance to build up a hand of twenty-three. He stopped folding, even when he had weak cards. Sitting out a hand gave the other players too much of a chance to win.

Some lucky shifts and some poor choices by his opponents made sure his strategy worked, though not without a cost. His efforts to protect the sabacc pot began to eat into his profits. His stack of winnings shrank quickly, but it would all be worth it if he won the sabacc pot.

Through hand after agonizing hand players continued to come and go. One by one the soldiers gave up their seats, forced out when they ran out of chips and couldn't afford more. Of the original group, only Des and the ensign remained. The ensign's pile was growing. A few of the soldiers stayed to watch, rooting for their man to beat the miner with the big mouth.

Other spectators came and went. Some were just waiting for a player to drop so they could swoop in and take the seat. Others were drawn by the intensity of the table and the size of the pots. After another hour the sabacc pot hit ten thousand chips, the maximum limit. Any credits paid into the sabacc pot now were wasted: they went straight into the ORO accounts. But nobody complained. Not with the chance to win a small fortune on the table.

Des glanced up at the chrono on the wall. The cantina would be closing in less than an hour. When he'd first sat down at the table, he'd felt certain he was going to win big. For a while he had been ahead. But the last few hours had drained his chips. Working to protect the sabacc pot was crippling him: he'd gone through all his profits and had to re-buy-in twice. He'd fallen into the classic gambler's trap, becoming so obsessed with winning the big pot that he'd lost sight of how much he was losing. He'd let the game get personal.

His shirt was hot and sticky with sweat. His legs were numb from sitting so long, and his back was aching from hunching forward expectantly to study his cards.

He was down almost a thousand credits on the night, but none of the other players had been able to cash in on his misfortune. With the Sabacc pot capped all the antes and penalties went straight to ORO. He'd have to work a month of grueling shifts in the mines if he ever wanted to see any of those credits again. But it was too late to turn back now. His only consolation was that the Republic ensign was down at least twice as much as he was. Yet each time the man ran out of chips, he'd just reach into his pocket and pull out another stack of credits, as if he had unlimited funds. Or as if he just didn't care.

The CardShark fired out another hand. As he peeked at his cards, Des began to feel the first real hints of self-doubt. What if his feeling was wrong this time? What if this wasn't his night to win? He couldn't remember a moment in the past when his gift had betrayed him, but that didn't mean it couldn't happen.

He pushed his chips in with a weak hand, defying every instinct that told him to fold. He'd have to come up at the start of the next turn, no matter how weak his cards were. Any longer and someone else might steal the sabacc pot he was working so hard to collect.

The marker flickered and the cards shifted. Des didn't bother to look; he simply flipped over his cards and muttered, "Coming up."

When he saw his hand he felt like he'd been slapped. He was sitting at negative twenty-three exactly, a bomb-out. The penalty cleaned out his stack of chips.

"Whoa, big fella," the ensign mocked drunkenly, "you must be lumsoaked to come up on that. What the brix were you thinking?"

"Maybe he doesn't understand the difference between plus twenty-three and minus twenty-three," said one of the soldiers watching the match, grinning like a manka cat.

Des tried to ignore them as he paid the penalty. He felt empty. Hollow.

"You don't talk so much when you're losing, huh?" the ensign sneered.

Hate. Des didn't feel anything else at first. Pure, white-hot hatred consumed every thought, every motion, and every ounce of reason in his brain. Suddenly he didn't care about the pot, didn't care about how many credits he had already lost. All he wanted was to wipe the smug expression from the ensign's face. And there was only one way he could do it.

He shot a savage glare in the ensign's direction, but the man was too drunk to be intimidated. Without taking his eyes off his enemy, Des swiped his ORO account card into the reader and rang up another buy-in, ignoring the logical part of his mind that tried to talk him out of it.

The CardShark, its circuits and wires oblivious to what was really going on, pushed a stack of chips toward him and uttered its typically cheery, "Good luck."

Des opened with the Ace and two of sabers. He was at seventeen, a dangerous hand. Lots of potential to go too high on his next card and bomb out. He hesitated, knowing that the smart move was to fold.

"Having second thoughts?" the ensign chided.

Acting on an impulse he couldn't even explain, Des moved his two into the interference field, then pushed his chips into the pot. He was letting his emotions guide him, but he no longer cared. And when the next card came up as a three, he knew what he had to do. He shoved his three into the interference field beside the two that was already there. Then he bet the maximum wager and waited for the switch.

There were actually two ways to win the sabacc pot. One was to get a hand that totaled twenty-three exactly, a pure sabacc. But there was an even better hand: the idiot's array. In modified Bespin rules, if you had a hand of two and three in the same suit and drew the face card known as the Idiot, which had no value at all, you had an idiot's array… 23 in the literal sense. It was the rarest hand possible, and it was worth more than even a pure sabacc.

Des was two-thirds of the way there. All he needed now was a switch to take his ten and replace it with the Idiot. Of course, that meant there had to be a switch. And even then he'd have to draw the Idiot off it… and there were only two Idiots in the entire seventy-six-card deck. It was a ridiculously long shot.

The marker came up red; the cards shifted. Des didn't even have to look at his hand: he knew.

He stared right into the ensign's eyes. "Coming up."

The ensign looked down at his own hand to see what the switch had given him and began to laugh so hard he could barely show his hand. He had the two of flasks, the three of flasks… and the Idiot!

There were gasps of surprise and murmurs of disbelief from the crowd. "How do you like that one, boys?" he cackled. "Idiot's array on the switch!"

He stood up, reaching out for the stack of chips on the small pedestal that sat in the center of the table representing the sabacc pot.