Does anyone know what the most eye-catching feature of the new Lisboa is?
I can guarantee, it's definitely not the cutting-edge casino, nor all the gambling tools and equipment, all built with real gold and silver.
If you can't guess, I'll reveal the answer.
The overall presentation!
From top to bottom, the new Lisboa is nothing short of ultra-luxurious, and that includes the restrooms!
To onlookers, the Lisboa can be considered a true epitome of decadent, luxurious, heavenly bliss!
To the contestants, this place is an undeniable battlefield of Asuras!
Competing in such an environment, it's impossible for a contestant's state of mind to remain consistently stable and undisturbed.
To avoid being eliminated in the first stage of the qualifiers, I asked the waiter for a cup of Americano, black with ice, no sugar.
The qualifiers officially kicked off. This stage is a Texas Hold'em tournament, with ten players per table.
The first stage of the qualifiers has no floor or seat restrictions; contestants can choose their floor and seat based on their hand.
The new Lisboa originally had five floors with a total of 240 gambling tables, with the remaining floors occupied by other entertainment facilities.
For this Thousand Kings Tournament, all floors except those retained for the hotel and a small portion of entertainment facilities have been modified.
Counting from top to bottom, the gambling tables, gambling tools, and equipment transferred and added from other venues can accommodate approximately twenty thousand people competing simultaneously.
Therefore, as soon as a table is filled with ten people, the dealer, along with their assistant, will jointly register the contestant information and then distribute the corresponding tournament chips.
Once the referee confirms everything is in order, the competition can officially begin.
The game time is two and a half hours, and only the person with the most chips at each table wins.
In other words, in this first round of qualifiers, out of over twenty-three thousand contestants, ninety percent will be eliminated.
Unless there's a special channel or method to directly advance to the second stage of the semi-finals, one still needs to be a bit cautious in this round.
Because countless ironclad rules have proven one point: anything that has no threshold is the most difficult to accomplish!
Take this round of qualifiers, for example. Those with ulterior motives can not only win and advance by cheating but can also achieve this goal by bribing other contestants in advance, utilizing the rule of unrestricted seating.
However, to be honest, unless you have genuine skill, advancing to the semi-finals will be in vain.
Of course, this rule is not a loophole in the competition, but rather a concession by the organizers to accommodate contestants brought in by certain sponsors and influential figures, turning a blind eye to it.
It's similar to major talent shows in later eras, where sponsors and influential figures are the financiers. If the people they arrange are eliminated in the first round of auditions, it would be quite embarrassing.
Therefore, this round of competition can be described as a gathering of all sorts of dubious characters.
With a ten-to-one win rate per table, if one doesn't give it their all, the probability of falling and being eliminated is quite high...
...
After the competition officially began, I didn't rush upstairs like most people; instead, I took a stroll around the lobby first.
For me, the ten minutes allocated for choosing a table was more than enough, as I could sit at any table I pleased, whether upstairs or downstairs.
The most crucial thing was to avoid potential pitfalls.
After a thorough walk around, I set my sights on a gambling table in a corner of the lobby.
Currently, only one woman was seated at that table, a woman with a very commanding presence.
She was wearing a sapphire blue lace hollow-out long dress, which, under the lights, reflected shimmering waves like the ebb and flow of the tide.
A woman who dares to wear a blue dress must have fair skin.
The woman before me was indeed flawless, with three thousand strands of dark hair casually draped over her shoulders.
Her fair, almost luminous legs beneath her were as smooth as Dove chocolate. (Just kidding.)
At the gambling table, I never judge people by their appearance, regardless of whether they are men or women, beautiful or ugly, masters or jesters.
Even though the woman in front of me was fair-skinned and possessed a strong aura, clearly indicating she wouldn't be an easy opponent, I walked over and sat down without hesitation.
The tables in the surrounding area were already mostly occupied.
As a latecomer, once I sat down, the referee would announce the official start of the game as soon as the table was full, and then it would be too late to observe other opponents.
Therefore, I preferred to be an early arrival.
Perhaps my action prompted some people who were still hesitating nearby, or perhaps they were all well aware that the table selection time was running out.
Within two to three minutes after I sat down, this gambling table was gradually filled with people.
As soon as the table was full, the dealer and their assistant began registering our hand information one by one, while the referee adjusted the instruments and equipment nearby.
To my slight surprise, in addition to the monitoring equipment already installed in the venue, four high-definition cameras were mounted in the center of the gambling table's pool, facing north, south, east, and west.
Then, seeing the referee wearing an earpiece, I immediately realized that the high-definition cameras installed at each table were for the referees' service, intended to help them perform their duties better.
These high-definition cameras were bound to capture the players' hand movements from all angles without blind spots. If any suspicious activity occurred, the backend would immediately initiate corresponding data analysis.
They would contact the referee directly if there was an issue, and if not, the game would continue.
Under these circumstances, the difficulty of cheating increased exponentially.
In addition to the pressure from the stage, the area below the stage was divided into several different sections.
In these sections, large screens were erected for projection.
Once the table selection and registration time ended, and the competition officially began, every word and every move of us contestants would be almost entirely exposed to everyone's sight.
As expected of the highly anticipated Thousand Kings Tournament, they intended to use high-tech products combined with high-density visual pressure to create an atmosphere akin to seeing shadows of snakes in a cup, keeping the contestants' minds constantly tense.
When the mind is in a state of prolonged tension, contestants are prone to nervousness in everything they do, and nervousness can easily lead to mistakes or errors.
As I was lost in thought, I suddenly heard the referee speak.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I am the referee for this table, Jiang Bin. It is my honor to meet you all. I will not go into detail about the rules of Deuce Poker here."
"Unlike other referees, who only spout platitudes like 'Don't you dare cheat, or you'll be eliminated,' none of that exists with me!"
"Since this is the Thousand Kings Tournament, then... let everyone show their true abilities!!!"