In The Trenches

 275.

"To the Psychologist, studying normal and abnormal states of cognitive processes and behaviors, the opportunity, the very one that made Vegas what it is today, sees the gray area between emotion and intellect as profitable, preying on human tendencies to wager with heart and not head." This 'gray area' is what is affectionately referred to as 'the juice' in gaming circles, and helps explain why the house always wins. However, in the hacking heart of a master programmer, the key word in that idiom is 'always', because it simply isn't true. Sure, over time the house, the syndicate, the hosting corporation, the street bookie, will emerge with a positive ledger, but to make it sexy and profitable, to keep the poor laying down their last dollars at the chance of a jackpot, every so often the house needs to lose. And so, as expert marketeers, every so often they do. It is simply good business.

The Queen has refined the 'every so often' randomness to a statistical flash point, a mathematical formula that encompass the myriad possibilities of any given situation. Like the dice where probabilities to roll a seven, all six combinations, total a 16.67% probability, her sophisticated algorithm uses a similar protocol with, in this seasonal case, football. The genesis of which began a decade and a half earlier when her hippie drummer Dad, whose favorite things in the world were Jimi Hendrix and gambling on football games, beer finishing a close third, once quoted to her - as they watched a tiny tube TV in a smokey saloon in Seattle's Pioneer Square - that "There are only three outcomes when one passes the football - and two of them are bad." For reasons unknown to her at the time but hinted at by her psychiatrist in later years, this was the planting of the seed that would eventually, after study, testing, trial, error and copious amounts of organic fertilizer and sunlight, be harvested as a million-dollar gaming hack.

"I get the hypothesis," Davis is saying to The Queen as they review the last minute program tweaks she has installed to speed the process, something like increasing bandwidth for higher resolution, "It's the synthesis and validation part that reminds me of incompletions and interceptions."

"You need to have some faith," she tries, "less than six seconds after the game has officially ended, the program will have re-worked every wager entered into the Luxor's system, adjusted the odds and calculated the payout, all in your favor as established by your initial wager, and in this case, a most substantial one."

"So I am the only person in the room who will see the scam, what about everyone else, won't there be a riot if winners suddenly become losers, kings paupers and high-rollers beggars? Davis wonders aloud, his skepticism showing.

"You should be the only person who places a very specific series of bets on the same card, ones that allow the program to find THAT ONE and make the necessary changes to effect the purse. In other words, the way you bet; the things you bet on: Team, score, over-and-under, total amount and time of placement all assist as search functions to find your ticket, augment it and then change it to maximize the payout. Only you, I and Goldson will be in on it. Relax, we got this, first and goal Dude."

"First and goal, right. And I suppose we'll call a pass."

"In a manner of speaking, we will, yes. Please know that even if incomplete or intercepted for a pick six, we will still get paid. The point is in the process, demonstrating our ability to control the, ahem, line of scrimmage."

"The game is won or lost in the trenches?"

"This game is won on the computer keyboard, my good sir."