Check.

Now we're talking. A board full of weak cards is at its most dangerous when your opponent plays a wide range. There are plenty of hands he could have that just improved dramatically – fishing for two pair or sets with low cards can be viable in some games – but checking on this board strongly suggests that he has nothing.

Shiro is four to a flush with no overcards, and the purely mathematical odds of her making the hand on the turn or river are 35%. If she makes it, she has the nuts – if this guy had an ace of clubs hand, he would've continued betting on the flop – so if it goes to showdown and he has a pair or better then those are her odds of winning.

However, poker is not a game of pure mathematics. Especially not against unsophisticated players. The optimal raise for maximizing profit against a rational opponent, considering this man's range and stack-to-pot ratio, are completely irrelevant. What she wants is a bet that will combine her odds of winning with his odds of folding for something that works out to positive expected value, and right now she's worried that a sufficiently large raise will scare him off.

She thinks for a bit, then raises 150. Not a huge raise, but still over half the pot. If he wants to stay in this hand, he needs to be sweating for it.

He rechecks his hole cards, then calls.

The pot is now 500, and the turn card is the ace of clubs.

Check.

Well, that makes life difficult. He now knows where the ace of clubs is, and if he doesn't have the king (very likely at this point) then he must be wondering where all of the face cards are. Problematically, they are in Shiro's hand. She's going to win this round, but it's going to be hard to get him to stay in if she keeps representing a strong holding.

She checks it back. Can't win 'em all.

The river is the ace of spades.

Check.

Nothing for it. She needs to make a raise that he'll feel inclined to call. How about 400?

"I fold."

He mucks his cards. One of them flutters and lands upside-down, showing the ten of diamonds.

Could've been a straight draw played for value. Probably not, in Shiro's opinion. It's most likely that he raised preflop with nothing, got nowhere, and folded to a hand that could've been anything. If these people think she was bluffing and decide to fight against her with weaker hands later on, so much the better. She tosses her hole cards into the deck and starts shuffling without showing.

And deals herself seven two offsuit.

How auspicious.

The party has not yet reached critical mass, but it's coming along. Sora is reluctantly enjoying himself. They're standing on a balcony overlooking the table where Chloe Zell is playing, with all six players regularly getting into genuinely entertaining multi-way pots. It's only midmorning, but three of the six are drinking a colorless carbonated beverage that Sora recently discovered is alcoholic.

(His first drink was discreetly discarded and replaced with water.)

This conversation is going nowhere, but it takes very little of his attention to participate. "Do they not try to settle their differences with words?"

"Not always, not always," says a middle-aged woman dressed in Elkian finery. "My newphew got himself into a tizzy when we gave our daughter a Loamigel terrier for her birthday last year – gorgeous beast, we bought it for a song from an elf passing through – he rather wanted it for himself, so he challenged Clara over it. Can't remember what he wagered, must've been something she quite fancied having herself if she thought they were equal."

"What did they play?"

"Tiddlywinks! Ah, Clara was ahead for most of it, but he won after squopping her last wink. Then, if you can believe it, he gave the terrier back a month later! Claimed it wasn't housebroken. Personally, I think he'd been neglectful with it and wanted it off his hands."

"Being housebroken is overrated," Juno drawls.

"Your idea of a good time is different from a house pet's," Sora points out.

"In scale and in scope, maybe."

"Interesting choice," says the ambassador from Elven Gard, looking down over the railing. The last to act was Chloe Zell, who check-raised on a wet board, and the hijack has now spent a full minute deliberating a call.

Getting check-raised is never a fun experience, and this early in the tournament is the best time to do it. Even if he's good at poker, the hijack hasn't seen enough of Zell's playstyle to put her on a range. Sora would be inclined to fold unless he had a set, and maybe even if he did. Getting away from a hand you're unlikely to win is an important poker skill – an important life skill too, if you live on Disboard.

The hijack folds. The cutoff calls.

"Bah," says another human, a man taking a break from playing in the tournament. "Weakest player I've seen all day. Don't know why he decided to sit down with Zell to begin with."

"You would've continued?" Sora asks.