After realizing his little scheme had been seen through by me, Mo Pingqiu no longer bothered to conceal it and said coldly, "I haven't decided what to bet on yet, let's pause for a moment!"
As expected, this old scoundrel hadn't even considered the possibility of a draw in the first round.
If I had been inclined to show off in the just-concluded round, Mo Pingqiu would have undoubtedly found ways to use underhanded tactics to trap me.
Fortunately, I had proactively chosen to retreat and slow down the frequency and speed of rolling the dice, refraining from forcefully asserting my dominance.
Now that the initiative had shifted, it was Mo Pingqiu's turn to be troubled.
However, I didn't press my advantage by objecting to Mo Pingqiu.
Since I was representing Ying Baolin in this challenge, regardless of the outcome, the process of the gamble had to be conducted openly and honestly, so that Yu Shuang would have no grounds to find fault…
About ten minutes passed.
Seemingly having received some advice from Yu Shuang, Mo Pingqiu regained his calm and composed demeanor, appearing as steady as a mountain.
After giving me a cold glance, Mo Pingqiu said in a deep voice, "Since you said earlier to let me decide the rules, then I'll gamble with you on... Texas Hold'em!"
This was as expected.
During the three days on the cruise ship, Yu Shuang must have repeatedly watched the recordings of me playing Texas Hold'em.
Queen Bee was someone who liked to fight prepared battles. She likely deduced from my performance in Texas Hold'em that this was not my most proficient card game.
Therefore, I, who had long been mentally prepared for this, did not appear surprised. Instead, I directly nodded in agreement.
Seeing me agree to play Texas Hold'em, after a fleeting look of joy in his eyes, Mo Pingqiu still maintained a pretense of composure and said, "The card rankings remain the same, but the rules will be slightly modified!"
"After the three community cards are dealt, we will each draw two hole cards ourselves, eliminating the环节 of dealing the fourth and fifth community cards."
"You and I will rely on the two hole cards we draw to form hands with the three community cards. The one with the larger hand wins directly!"
Devious! This old scoundrel Mo Pingqiu was truly devious!
This was clearly a disguised game of Stud Poker, yet he insisted on calling it Texas Hold'em.
Of course, I could roughly guess why he said this.
Ultimately, Mo Pingqiu's greatest strength was dice, not cards.
If he had directly said they were gambling on Stud Poker, according to the folk rules of Stud Poker in Wenzhou, except for the first two cards, the subsequent three cards, once dealt, could all be handled by oneself for revealing.
Coupled with the ability to change hole cards once before the final reveal, it meant each person had four opportunities to cheat and swap cards.
Texas Hold'em, however, was different.
From beginning to end, a cheat only had two opportunities to cheat and swap cards, and both corresponded to their own hole cards.
Taking away the last two community cards was an upgraded version of Stud Poker.
But unlike Stud Poker, in Texas Hold'em, there were only two cards that could be subject to cheating.
It would have been more straightforward to directly admit that they were gambling on Texas Stud Poker!
I knew in my heart that Yu Shuang was doing everything she could to create trouble and difficulties for me.
However, since I had already agreed to let Mo Pingqiu decide the rules, I naturally couldn't go back on my word.
So, after a brief moment of thought, I nodded and agreed, "Alright, I have no problem with that!"
Once the playing method was confirmed, Ke Jie immediately took a brand new deck of Bee playing cards from a drawer beneath the gambling table and opened it in front of everyone.
Then, he placed the cards on the table in a practiced manner, fanning them out into a… somewhat overly folded fan shape.
Next was the card inspection phase.
After the Jokers were removed, four complete, uniform long dragons were laid out neatly on the table, clearly visible at a glance, making card inspection unnecessary.
Hearing that both Mo Pingqiu and I stated we didn't need to inspect the cards, Ke Jie prepared to shuffle.
Before officially shuffling, to avoid any criticism, Yu Shuang had a professional Texas Hold'em dealer standing nearby remind Ke Jie to perform a segmented, non-standard cross-shuffle.
Honestly, some of the shuffling techniques of professional dealers were not only comparable to those of cheats, but some were even better.
If a professional dealer were shuffling this round, I could have taken advantage of their ability to accurately gauge the number of cards to secretly memorize a couple of cards.
But now, that was unlikely.
Shuffling by a non-Texas Hold'em professional could be simply translated as: random shuffling!
No matter how many cards were memorized beforehand, once the deck was reassembled, there would be no discernible pattern!
If one truly couldn't remember the card order, then cheating would be the only option!
But I didn't need to guess to know that unless I lost this round, if I won, regardless of whether I had cheated or not, Yu Shuang would definitely find an excuse to inspect the cards.
Therefore, to avoid being in a completely passive situation, as soon as Ke Jie started shuffling, I fixed my gaze on the deck of cards in his hands, not blinking.
This was the crucial moment to truly engage in a battle of wits and memory!
...
Although Ke Jie was not a professional dealer, he clearly looked like an experienced gambler, his shuffling techniques were proficient, and his speed was above average.
From the moment Ke Jie began shuffling, Mo Pingqiu and I locked our sights onto him, intently watching his hands.
First, observing how many cards were dropped at a time, then whether the interleaving was from the top, bottom, or middle…
After memorizing all of Ke Jie's shuffling actions, my next task was to mentally reverse-engineer them and reconstruct the complete card order as much as possible.
If my memory could freely rewind to the scene of the four long dragons, then this deck… would be about seventy to eighty percent restored.
However, using memory to reverse-engineer and restore the card order was extremely mentally taxing and could not tolerate any distractions.
If one's state was not good, the more they tried, the more chaotic it would become…
By the time Ke Jie finished shuffling, cut the deck, and dealt the three community cards, Mo Pingqiu and I were still diligently trying to recall.
Clearing his throat, Ke Jie pointed to the playing cards spread on the gambling table and asked, "Gentlemen, who will draw the first card?"
Startled by Ke Jie's voice, Mo Pingqiu and I both withdrew from our focused states.
Before I could speak, Mo Pingqiu immediately seized the opportunity and said, "Since you let me choose the rules, it's only reasonable for me to draw first, isn't it?"
Before his words had even fully fallen, I saw Mo Pingqiu's left hand dart out towards the deck like a phantom, and with a "whoosh," he drew a card.
This damn old scoundrel!
He pushed the disadvantageous situation onto me, while rushing to take the advantageous initiative for himself!
His eagerness was purely to verify the accuracy of his memory.