The Depth of the Chip Pool

Seeing Sister Liu go all-in, Lin Sizhi and Qin Yao naturally had no reason to keep raising. They both chose to call and reveal their cards.

Sister Liu had K University's mixed hand.

Qin Yao had a pair of Queens.

Lin Sizhi had J University's mixed hand.

[Player's chips depleted. Please leave the table.]

As the mechanical arm swept all the chips on the table over to Qin Yao, Sister Liu left the gambling table in a daze.

But she had no complaints.

Looking at the chips before her, Qin Yao could not help but cheer up. "Great! I finally won a round!"

She had earned 19,000 points in this round, an utterly unbelievable number.

Yet when Qin Yao looked at Lu Xinyi, her heart skipped a beat.

Because the corners of Lu Xinyi's lips had curled up slightly, as though she did not care much at all.

Lin Sizhi looked at her. "It's two against three now. You can still smile?"

Lu Xinyi gently shook her head. "You should worry about yourself instead. Is bluffing the only thing you know how to do?

"Count your chips and see how many more rounds you can play."

Clearly, Lu Xinyi's confidence came from the depth of their chip pool.

She and Lu Mingxuan still had plenty of chips, enough to handle the rest of the game with ease.

Meanwhile, after losing two rounds in such a big way, Lin Sizhi had already lost a full 13,000 points' worth of chips.

Even if he sold blood, Lin Sizhi could only get forty or fifty thousand points' worth of chips at most. Playing like this, how many rounds could he last?

"Tick-tock."

"Tick-tock."

The countdown on the big screen continued to tick down. There were twenty-one minutes left.

The game had also reached the seventh mini-round.

The young man seated to Qin Yao's right had run out of chips in the previous round and been forced to leave. Of the remaining four, each had won and lost their share.

This outcome had been inevitable, because he had held the fewest chips.

With Lin Sizhi constantly raising without thinking, he either declined to call and lost the ante for nothing, or called only to be harvested by Lu Xinyi or Lu Mingxuan. After struggling through several rounds, he had still been left with no choice but to leave the table.

But clearly, he was not the one who had lost the worst. Lin Sizhi was.

Because Lin Sizhi had continued with his previous strategy. After looking at his cards, he would always mindlessly put down at least 4,000 points' worth of chips, then call as if his life depended on it.

It was only that his thinking time after looking at his cards had grown longer and longer, while his willingness to raise had gradually diminished.

By now, he had lost nearly forty thousand chips.

More than ten thousand of those had been won by Qin Yao, while Lu Xinyi and Lu Mingxuan had split the rest.

Watching the pile of chips before her grow taller and taller, Lu Xinyi finally let out the breath she had been holding.

As their chip counts rose and fell, Lin Sizhi's chances of turning things around were rapidly shrinking.

As long as they drained Lin Sizhi's chips, the next three rounds would be two against one for her and Lu Mingxuan.

At that point, they would hold an absolute advantage and could definitely make Qin Yao cough up every chip she had won, principal and interest included.

When that time came, Qin Yao's only choice would be to give up and lose the antes for three rounds.

Lu Mingxuan was the dealer this round. After looking at his cards, he chose to raise.

It was Lin Sizhi's turn.

"I've had rotten luck for six rounds straight. It should be my turn to get lucky, right?"

He silently sighed, picked up the cards on the table listlessly, and glanced at them.

Then his eyes instantly lit up.

But Lin Sizhi's expression quickly became calm again, even carrying a hint of worry.

He hesitated for a full minute. Only when the countdown was about to end did he pull his right hand from his pocket and slam six 2,000-point chips onto the table.

"Raise!!"

Qin Yao looked at him. After considering it for a while as well, she carefully selected 13,000 points' worth of chips from those she had won and put them down.

"I raise too."

Lu Mingxuan's brows twitched, and he was somewhat stunned.

Because the number of chips this time had genuinely frightened him.

More importantly, based on their estimates, Lin Sizhi should have had at most a little over forty thousand chips. Yet now, the total number of chips Lin Sizhi had put out had already exceeded fifty thousand.

This had completely exceeded the expectations he and Lu Xinyi had initially formed and thrown off their judgment.

The countdown on the table continued to tick away. With only a minute, it was difficult to make a decision quickly.

Fortunately, he was not the one who needed to make the decision now.

Lu Mingxuan looked at Lu Xinyi, only to find that the corners of her mouth were uncontrollably lifting.

She even let out a laugh.

"Your acting is way too bad at a critical moment like this. Are you putting on a show for me?"

Lu Xinyi quickly counted out 13,000 points' worth of chips from the table and pushed them forward.

"I'm betting that you're bluffing.

"And your pockets should be completely empty. You have no chips left."

Lu Xinyi stared fixedly into Lin Sizhi's eyes.

Lin Sizhi did not meet her gaze. Instead, he looked at the countdown on the table. "Why do you think I'm bluffing?"

Lu Xinyi smiled. "Because people all have path dependence.

"At the most tense, most critical moments, people often choose the methods they are best at and most instinctively accustomed to.

"Clearly, you're a player who likes bluffing, and you're exceptionally stubborn about it.

"After your first bluff fails, you'll immediately use the idea of hiding in plain sight to continue bluffing a second and third time.

"Ordinary players really can be intimidated by you, especially when you can toss out huge numbers of chips without changing expression and crush their mental defenses. That truly is an excellent quality for a gambler.

"If you scared me in this round, then in every remaining round afterward, I would be at a psychological disadvantage.

"But unfortunately, you overlooked one very important factor: the depth of the chip pool.

"You've worked hard to create the illusion that your chip pool is infinitely deep, that you can casually pull out tens of thousands or even over a hundred thousand chips from your pockets, making your opponents feel as though our chip pools are not even on the same level and steadily building their fear.

"And when you suddenly throw out an unreasonable amount of chips far beyond expectations, ordinary people will think they misjudged things. In just one minute, they won't be able to quickly decide whether to call.

"Not only that, you deliberately put on a performance when you looked at your cards, showing a contradictory attitude.

"That will intensify your opponents' doubts. Whether they guess your hand is strong or weak, it will only make their thoughts more confused.

"But unfortunately, I won't consider those things.

"Because in this game, there is a limit to how much blood can be drawn, and there is also a limit to how many chips can be exchanged.

"Drawing 400 milliliters is the safe line, 600 milliliters is the limit, and 800 milliliters carries an extremely high risk of death.

"Since your chip pool cannot possibly be infinitely deep, this final desperate gamble must be a bluff.

"And even more fortunately... I happen to have a pretty good hand this round, so I've decided to call you to the end."

Lin Sizhi fell silent for a moment. "But what if my hand is even better? After all, my luck was terrible for the first six rounds. It should be my turn to get lucky, shouldn't it?"

Lu Xinyi smiled. "Learn some probability. Every hand is an independent event. There's no such thing as a law of conservation of luck in actual probability."

As she spoke, Lu Mingxuan's thinking time ran out, and he folded. Lin Sizhi's thinking time had only a few seconds remaining as well.

With a calm expression, Lin Sizhi reached into his suit pocket again.

"Is that so? Then what if... my hand really is excellent, and my chip pool really is infinitely deep?"

He grabbed something from his pocket, then gently placed three 1,000-point chips in the betting area.

"Raise, 3,000."

Qin Yao silently put down another 3,000 as well. "I raise too."

Clearly, Qin Yao was merely coordinating with Lin Sizhi. She raised the 1,000-point difference to ensure the cards would not be revealed.

Lu Xinyi's expression stiffened. She was clearly somewhat surprised by those 3,000 chips.

But she quickly recovered, sighing and shaking her head helplessly. "Fine, you really know how to squeeze out toothpaste bit by bit. You actually hid these chips too.

"Are you trying to stall for time?

"If that's the case..."

Lu Xinyi once again took five 2,000-point chips from the pile before her.

"I raise another ten thousand."

In Lu Xinyi's view, ten thousand chips was an amount Lin Sizhi could absolutely never squeeze out again.

His only choice now would be to go all-in and reveal the cards.

Yet Lin Sizhi reached into his pocket again. After feeling around for a moment, he pulled out another four 2,000-point chips.

"Raise."

Lin Sizhi's two raises were 3,000 points and 8,000 points respectively, exactly 1,000 points more than Lu Xinyi's each time.

Lu Xinyi froze. She could not understand where these chips had come from at all.

Lin Sizhi's suit pocket was like a treasure bowl containing infinite chips. No matter how many times he reached in, he could always pull out more.

And worse still, Lin Sizhi always had exactly 1,000 more chips than Lu Xinyi.

This meant that if Lu Xinyi folded now, she would never see what Lin Sizhi's hand actually was, and every chip she had thrown out before would be wasted.

But if she continued to call, Lu Xinyi had no idea how many more chips Lin Sizhi could produce, or how many more she herself would have to put down.

"No, calm down. Even if Lin Sizhi still has chips, Qin Yao shouldn't have many left..."

As long as Qin Yao ran out of chips and could not keep raising, the cards would be revealed anyway, and she would still get to see Lin Sizhi's hole cards.

But in the next second, a scene Lu Xinyi had not expected appeared.

Qin Yao no longer had enough chips on the table, but she too reached into her pocket and scraped together 8,000 points' worth of chips.

"Raise."