There were generally half a dozen of us who got together each week for a few beers and some poker. Four of us were regulars, at every game, and the settings for the games rotated amongst the four of them. It's the four regulars that story is really concerned with.
The four of us were Mike, Freddy, Moose, and Paul.
Paul was in his twenties, pretty average in all things except his temper. He tended to get angry easily. He was especially touchy if he felt someone was cheating him.
Freddy, also in his twenties. Lovely wife, name of Betty. Freddy was average in all things but normally a bad poker player. This was offset by sudden streaks of luck, and that kept him turning up for another game.
Moose was around thirty and he was big. Over six foot tall and heavily built at that. He was surprisingly light on his feet, and could move with deceptive speed. There were a couple of odd rumours about Moose, and people tended to be wary about him. The rumours, you're wondering.
Well, the rumours were related. It was hinted that his personal equipment was more than a match for his formidable size. It was also said that he'd been known to swing both ways and that his personal equipment had sent his last partner to hospital with a ruptured sphincter.
Finally, there was Mike. That's me. In my twenties and happily married. I'm good at poker. I know my odds and I'm really good at picking patterns. I know how people are reacting even if they do have good poker faces. I tend to get a feeling from their whole body language.
It's that ability of mine to pick patterns that triggered the events that night. My job is an analyst and efficiency expert. I can see patterns where other people only see random events or piles of data. I can also see ways to shorten or change patterns to achieve desired results. Quite often I will find myself knowing something, and then I tend to review what I know to try to find out what were the patterns that let me have that information.
That night we were playing at Freddy's place, and half way through the night I suddenly realised that Freddy was cheating. I mean, I just knew it. So I pulled out my old habit and started reviewing the data. I've already mentioned Freddy's lucky streaks. Now it came to my attention that they only ever happened when we played at his house.
Considering what went on when we played at Freddy's another pattern emerged, and I knew just how he was doing it. Not wanting to let on while Freddy was in the room and in reach of a couple of irate players I didn't speak until Freddy left the room to go to attend to natures call.
Then I spoke up.
"Tell me, Betty," I said, "how long have you been checking out our hands and signalling them to Freddy?"
There was this sudden silence over our little group as Moose and Paul turned to look at Betty. The pair of them were royally pissed, as that particular night they were both down fifty bucks apiece, and that money was sitting in front of Freddy's spot.
If she had thought faster Betty might have pulled of a denial, but she just stood there in shock and wanted to know how I could tell.
My intention had been for Paul and Moose to get accustomed to the idea before Freddy returned so that they wouldn't just reach out and beat him to death. I hadn't, unfortunately, made enough allowance for Paul's mercurial nature when he thought he was being shafted. And to be fair, in this instance, he was.
Betty was standing just behind him, and he must have had a good hand, because he looked at it in fury, looked over his shoulder at Betty, swore, tossed the hand down and stood up.
