Chapter 147 — The Long-Awaited...

When the chips on Yang Ce's table were about to pass a billion, the floor manager could no longer stand still. He walked over to the dealer, whispered a few words in his ear, and the dealer nodded and hurried away.

"All right, that dealer's shift has ended, and I'll fill in for now—the relief dealer hasn't arrived yet." The floor manager addressed everyone, though in truth he was speaking to Yang Yanzhou.

For since Yang Ce began betting, no one had placed a bet after him; they simply crowded around to watch the spectacle.

Yang Yongjin gave a scornful smile, naturally understanding what was going on. Besides, Yang Ce could read lips—no matter how quietly the floor manager spoke, Yang Shuoxuan heard every word clearly.

The floor manager had already realized that Yang Juehuan's luck was too good, and so he meant to take the table himself. No doubt this floor manager had some extraordinary skill in shaking dice.

As for the technique of shaking dice, Yang Ce had heard of it: with diligent practice one could basically master it, until in the end you could shake whatever number you wanted and have it come up. But once the bowl cover came down, nothing could be changed—all the skill was worked out in the air.

"Suit yourself. Go ahead, then." Yang Ce gave the floor manager a sidelong glance and spoke as though it were nothing.

The floor manager's control over the dice had reached a very high level. He was not as effortless as Yu Deyi, but if he concentrated, he seldom made a mistake. Otherwise he could never have risen to the position of floor manager.

This time the floor manager put all his strength into it, and what came up was three, three, four—ten points, the highest number in the small range. Now he was somewhat suspicious that Yang Ce might be able to hear the dice, yet he did not believe it, for to this day he had never met anyone who could read dice by ear.

Yang Ce glanced at the floor manager, sweat pouring down his face from shaking, then looked at the numbers under the cover, and casually pushed more than a billion in chips straight onto small.

The floor manager's heart lurched. No—such a coincidence? He frowned, steeled himself, lifted the cover, and announced that Yang Ce had won.

In the casino, the onlookers cheered again. This man was practically an ever-victorious general—so many hands, not a single loss. Zhang Bin could no longer speak. Yes, he had finally understood Yang Ce's earlier remark: I'll show you what a god of gamblers is. Yu Deyi was not in the casino, and the floor manager was the most skilled dice-shaker available. Nor could they drive Yang Ce out now; a man who came into a casino was a guest, and to drive him out would be to drive out a guest. In a situation like this, he truly had no authority to decide.

Just now he had sent that dealer to notify the casino's general manager, Wang Dianxue. At this moment Wang Dianxue was sitting quite comfortably in the big leather chair of the general manager's office, savoring the coffee in his hand.

He was in excellent spirits today. He had waited a long time for this day; at last Yu Deyi felt his strength had surpassed Zheng Shaopeng's, and so Wang Dianxue had sent him to wreck the Warwick Casino.

Today's outcome was foreseeable: the Warwick Casino would shut its doors for good within the coming month. With that month as a buffer, his own South City Casino would have a hard time not growing big.

A rival who had competed with him for years was about to fall. Wang Dianxue could not have been happier. Just then he heard a knock at the door and asked briskly, "Who is it? Come in."

The dealer cautiously pushed the door open and said, "Mr. Wang, I'm the dealer from the ground floor. A master has come into the casino—"

"A master? What master?" Wang Dianxue was startled and asked.

"A man came downstairs, took a hundred million in chips to bet big or small, and then won many times in a row. By the time I was there he had already won more than a billion. Now the floor manager has taken over, and I hurried up to inform you." The dealer described in detail to Wang Dianxue what had happened downstairs.

"What? A hundred million—won more than a billion?" Wang Dianxue's eyes went wide. You had to understand that the casino's daily profit was only between ten and fifteen million; a single man had come downstairs and won more than a billion in one go—that was more than half a year's profit lost just like that!

"When I was there he had already won that much. I don't know whether the floor manager can beat him now," the dealer explained with a miserable expression.

"Does he push it all in every time?" Wang Dianxue, worthy of a man of boldness, quickly recovered from the shock.

"Yes, every time he bets everything, principal and profit together," the dealer said.

"So if he loses even once, he loses everything," Wang Dianxue said.

"That's right. But the trouble is, he hasn't lost a single time," the dealer said.

"Come on, let's go down and have a look together." Wang Dianxue frowned. What on earth is going on today? he thought. I've only just sent my men to raid someone else's place, and now someone's come to raid mine—and from the look of it, whoever's doing the raiding is a first-rate expert.

Together with his secretary, he followed the dealer downstairs to the casino floor, where he saw at a glance a crowd of onlookers packed around the big-small table.

"Do you know that man?" Wang Dianxue had spotted Yang Ce sitting there at once, but the man's face was unfamiliar—he had never seen him before. If the man were a gambler of any standing, there was no reason he wouldn't know him. Could it be that some other casino had found an expert from somewhere and sent him here deliberately to take his place down? Or was he simply a lone operator who had come here to make his fortune?

If it was the second case, of course, it would be easy enough to handle: call him into the office, threaten and intimidate him a little, then hand him a large sum of money, and that would basically settle it. If it was the first case, things would be rather harder.

"Never seen him. He's not in Macau's gambling circles, and he's not a consultant for anyone else either." Wang Dianxue's secretary had a memory second to none; after one look at Yang Ce, he shook his head.

Wang Dianxue nodded silently to show he understood, but inwardly he was thinking about how to deal with the matter. He had just glanced casually at the table, and his heart had given a start: the chips in front of Yang Ce had actually already reached ten billion.

If that were lost, several years of his profits would be gone, and all his painstaking effort would have been for nothing. But since Yang Ce staked his whole bet every time, there was still room to turn things around.

After a moment's hesitation, a ruthless smile flickered across Wang Dianxue's face, and he instructed the secretary beside him: "Go tell Steward Qian to roll him a triple."

To be continued.

871. A Voluntary Surrender

871 A Voluntary Surrender. In the rules of the casino, the so-called big-or-small wager is played with three dice. The dice are shaken first and the bets placed afterward; four to ten points is small, eleven to seventeen is big. Bet right, and the house pays; bet wrong, and the stake goes to the house.

There is, however, one highly unusual and rarely seen situation: if the house rolls a "full dice"—that is, all three dice showing the same number, commonly known as a "triple"—then the house takes everything.

So as long as the house rolls any of the six combinations—"one, one, one," "two, two, two," all the way to "six, six, six"—that counts as a full-dice triple, and at such a time, whether the players bet big or small, they are all considered to have lost.