Chapter 021: The Fatal Nine of Spades

Chapter 021: The Fatal Nine of Spades

The odds this time were far too favorable to pass up. Shen Guangjun, a man with a gambler’s heart to begin with, decided to take the bet. Wu Chen hadn’t even looked at his hole card—there was no way, Shen Guangjun told himself, that anyone’s luck could run that absurdly high.

Impossible. Unreasonable. Unscientific.

Shen Guangjun hurried out, Bao Wei trailing after him, to transfer funds for more chips. Crown Entertainment extended no credit—if Shen Guangjun wanted chips, the money had to move on the spot. For a boss of his standing, of course, no transfer limit applied.

And if he won, the chips could be cashed out the moment he left the club. On that front, Li Ruotai’s reputation was spotless. Rules were rules, fixed and unbending.

Everyone in the private room waited for him to return.

The cards on the table had already been covered and sealed for the time being. Sealing the cards was part of the rules, even with both sides watching closely.

Wu Chen leaned back in his chair, hands folded behind his head. Then, tilting his head, he murmured something to Li Ruobing.

Confusion flickered across her face. She stared at him, not quite following.

“Go get it. Don’t make a scene—it’ll come in handy. Just play along,” Wu Chen said softly, smiling.

“Stop bossing me around,” Li Ruobing shot back, but she rose and left anyway.

She returned within minutes, settling back beside him. Half a minute later, Shen Guangjun reappeared too, carrying a small tray stacked with twenty five-million-yuan chips.

He’d come prepared to challenge the house with an expert this time, a war chest of a hundred and fifty million yuan in total—money he’d scraped together with real effort, much of it borrowed. Fortunately, his expert hadn’t let him down. After the first thirty-million buy-in, he’d never needed to exchange more.

So this hundred million, at least, he could still produce.

Twenty million remained in his account.

Shen Guangjun handed the hundred million in chips to Yao Bin.

Wu Chen pushed every chip on his side forward, then gestured toward Bao Wei, who’d just returned with Shen Guangjun.

With several earlier rounds of betting already on the table, Yao Bin’s final all-in came to eighty million—ninety million once the earlier chips were counted in.

Wu Chen called it, matching the eighty million; with his own earlier bets folded in, his side came to ninety million as well.

Then he raised another hundred million on top. In total: one hundred ninety million.

Except he didn’t actually have that much—only a hundred fifty million. Luckily, the hundred million Bao Wei had brought over earlier had never truly left the room. Though Wu Chen had told him to take it away, Bao Wei had simply set the small box down on a table in the corner.

He fetched it again now.

Wu Chen pulled forty million from the box, tossed it down, and pushed his whole stack toward the center.

“Calling your all-in, and as agreed, raising another hundred million,” Wu Chen said. “One hand settles it. Let’s go.”

“Fine. I call.” Yao Bin pushed his own stack forward, then picked up his hole card and rose to his feet. He adjusted his glasses, smiling. “Young man, you should know—the worst thing in gambling is impatience. Win or lose, if you can’t master your own state of mind, you won’t get far.”

Wu Chen watched him lecture on, smiling.

It seemed Yao Bin had been holding this in for far too long.

True enough—ever since Wu Chen had bluffed him on the eleventh hand, the pressure had been building. No matter what he tried, he couldn’t beat the man. Small wins, big losses—the two-hundred-million cushion he’d built early on had been bleeding away, hand by hand. Of course it had worn on him.

Losing to some famous, seasoned master would have stung less.

But losing to Wu Chen—some nobody kid—that was humiliating.

Now, finally, came his moment to let it all out.

“Truthfully, your talent runs high, but you’ve got every flaw young players tend to have. A bit too clever for your own good. Too much faith in luck. Fixed little habits at the table that give your hand away to anyone paying attention. Plenty of problems—but… if you’re interested, come to Macau with me. I’ll take you on. I’ll teach you.”

“You don’t even check your hole card. I’ve genuinely never seen anyone play like this. Only a kid like you would try something so reckless. Our upcards match exactly—so tell me, what makes you think you can beat me?”

Yao Bin finally wound down his speech. Even the God of Gamblers wouldn’t have talked this much.

Smack.

He flipped his hole card face-up and slapped it onto the table.

The nine of diamonds.

“A pair of nines. Not a huge hand. But your upcards match mine card for card. If you want to beat me, there’s exactly one card that does it—the nine of spades. I still can’t fathom why you never looked at your own card.” He laughed, then braced both hands on the table, leaning in with real weight behind his stare. “I refuse to believe your hole card is the nine of spades. You never even checked. You’re really gambling everything on blind luck?”

And with that, Yao Bin’s bluster finally ran dry.

Everyone in the room went pale.

In stud, when hands were compared, hand type came first. If both hands matched in type, rank decided it. If rank matched too, suit broke the tie.

Say both players held high-card hands with an ace on top—the ace of spades would win. Suits ranked, highest to lowest: spades, hearts, clubs, diamonds.

Yao Bin’s hand: nine of diamonds, nine of hearts, seven of diamonds, six of clubs, three of clubs.

A pair. Nines.

Wu Chen’s upcards: a nine, a seven, a six, a three.

If his hole card was anything that didn’t match, he had nothing but a high card—weaker than a pair. If it matched one of the others, giving him a pair of sevens, sixes, or threes, he’d still lose to Yao Bin’s nines.

Only one card could save him.

The last nine in the deck.

The nine of spades.

If that was his hole card, both men would hold a pair of nines—and suit alone would decide the winner.

Spades outranked everything.

Which was exactly why Yao Bin felt so certain.

Only one card in the whole deck let Wu Chen win.

One chance.

The only chance.

And in a two-player hand, the odds of all four nines surfacing at once were vanishingly small. A sliver of hope, nothing more.

Had Wu Chen looked at his card first, Yao Bin might have hesitated—checking, then raising, at least suggested confidence, a rational bet. But Wu Chen had never looked at all. Pure gambling on blind chance. Yao Bin didn’t believe anyone’s luck ran that heaven-defying.

Everyone in the room understood: Wu Chen’s odds of winning were now longer than a lottery jackpot.

Li Ruotai’s face soured at once.

Not that he blamed Wu Chen—even in defeat, the man had won plenty before this final hand. Crown Entertainment had lost over two hundred million today overall, and only forty-some million of that traced back to Wu Chen. The fault wasn’t his.

Li Ruotai was furious with himself instead, for not stopping this “brother-in-law” who looked so capable and yet, apparently, wasn’t quite as capable as he seemed.

Betting everything on the final hand—why gamble it all on pure luck?

“Hahaha, Young Master Li, your family’s roots run deep and your fortune runs deeper. Surely you won’t get sore over a bit of pocket change?” Shen Guangjun clapped him on the shoulder, laughing loudly.

Li Ruotai’s shoulder jerked. He shrugged the hand off.

“Finished?” Wu Chen finally spoke, still leaning back with his hands laced behind his head, looking at Yao Bin with an easy smile.

“Show your card, then.” Yao Bin gave a faint smile and a polite gesture of invitation.

“Well then—forgive me.” Wu Chen sat forward, planted an elbow on the table, and pinched his hole card between two fingers. Without so much as a glance himself, he turned it straight toward Yao Bin. “It really is the nine of spades.”

Smack.

He slapped the card down on the felt.

“You—” Yao Bin’s pupils contracted violently, the color draining from his face in an instant.

The room fell so silent a pin drop would have echoed.

Everyone froze in shock.

Wu Chen rose slowly, voice light. “You really thought I never looked at my hole card? Did I ever actually say that?”