Mukoubuchi Chapter 16

At long last, I bring to you Chapter 16 of Mukoubuchi, starting a brand-new arc! It's been 7 months since the last chapter, which is due to a number of factors. I had to do the translating, cleaning, AND typesetting on this chapter, and also there was the long essay at the end of Volume 2 which I worked on in bits and pieces when I wasn't translating Kaiji. But it's finally here, and this time, Yasunaga will be taking us down to an underground casino where Kai's opponent for this arc works as a Baccarat dealer...

As I mentioned, I did all the translating, cleaning and typesetting this chapter, but even though he humbly took himself out of the credits on the first page, Tambur was integral to making sure all the formatting stayed consistent and everything looked perfect, so thanks very much to him!

Chapter Link

"Now, do try to run away."

Baccarat is a fun, exciting and unpredictable gambling game where the winners and losers can change with every card. I didn't have space to explain it all in the chapter, but really it's quite simple and I'll explain it quickly here. As you saw, it's played with standard playing cards from Ace through King. Like Blackjack, it is usually played with multiple decks to make it harder to count cards. Each card from Ace to 9 is worth the value it has on it, with Ace being counted as 1. The 10, Jack, Queen and King are all worth 10, but as you'll soon see that effectively makes them all worth 0.

Each hand, two cards each are dealt to the "Dealer" and "Banker", which are actually just positions that gamblers can bet on and not actually the House's hand and the gamblers' hand. To find the score of each position, you add up the values of the cards and then take only the last digit of your result. So for example, if Player is dealt a 9 and an 8, since 9+8=17, their score is 7 because only the last digit counts. That's why a 10 is the same as 0; the ten's place doesn't matter.

After getting dealt their initial two cards, Player then draws an additional card if their score is 5 or less, and Dealer draws an additional card based on a somewhat complicated drawing table that I won't go into here. Whichever has the higher score at that point is the winning bet. Banker has a small advantage because of the aforementioned drawing rules, but in exchange you win less if you bet on Banker. Also worth noting, a score of 8 or 9 in the first two cards is called a "Natural", and no more cards are drawn when there is a Natural hand.

So in the end it's a glorified coin flip, but the format of the game makes it very exciting. especially if you "squeeze" cards like they do in this chapter. Just about every hand you'll be hoping for a specific card, like a 4 to turn your 5 into a 9, so if you see a two-side at that point (a 4, 5 or 6) the suspense gets unreal, as you can then turn it vertically to see if it has a mark in the middle (which would mean a 5 or 6) or not (4 or 5)! It's the only casino game where you're allowed to touch the cards, and gamblers make the most of it!

I know all this from experience, as when I went to Vegas for the World Riichi Competition a few months ago I played some baccarat. I won a bit of money at low-stakes baccarat where you're not allowed to touch the cards, but that wasn't enough for me so I tested my luck at a $25 minimum bet table. When I sat down, I was greeted with cold silence as everyone eyed me up, probably thinking "does this white boy even know how to play?" Baccarat, you see, is mostly played by Asians nowadays. It's the world's most popular gambling game only because it has such a large market in Asia. Indeed, when I looked around at the 10 other Baccarat tables, I was the only person not of Asian descent, and I must have stood out like a sore thumb.

But I didn't care. I wanted to play the cool game that was in Mukoubuchi! So I bought in for $100 and looked around at the others at the table. There were only 3 other people at my table, not counting the people watching on from behind them. They all had a decent stack of chips, but the one that caught my eye was a thin, middle-aged Chinese man in a blue polo shirt. He must have had $5000 in chips sitting next to him, and the lowest I ever saw him bet was $200. Most hands he was betting $500, and winning big every time! "This guy's luck has got to end", I thought, so after losing my initial $25 on a Banker bet, I waited for him to place his bet on the next hand. He put a few chips down on the side bets (Panda and Dragon, really long-shot bets that the Casino wants you to make but you never should because they suck) and looked at the board for a moment.

The board, by the way, displays the previous outcomes of the hands in the current shoe (set of 8 decks), so gamblers can try to find patterns to bet on. We were currently in the middle of a long Player win streak, 6 hands in a row the winning hand had been Player. The gambler's fallacy would have you believe that Banker was due for the next hand for sure, but this man deliberately placed a huge $500 bet on Player!

I felt sure I had him, so I put $50 on Banker. The others at the table only bet on side bets, so it was a heads-up showdown between me and him, although we weren't betting the same amount. Nonetheless, one of us would win, and one of us would lose unless it was a tie! The anticipation built as the cards were dealt. The dealer dealt our cards face-down and then pushed them over to us. I took my cards, but waited for him to reveal his first. He squeezed his cards differently than me; he just peeled up the corner where the number was and slowly moved his thumb out of the way, revealing the number. After 30 seconds of this, he flipped over his two cards, a 7 and a 6. This meant his total score was 3.

I then squeezed my cards the way you see in this chapter, by placing the card horizontally and putting my thumbs on each end to cover up the numbers and only see the amount of symbols. This would allow me to tell what KIND of card it was before I found out exactly which card it was. My first card was a three-side. In other words, it had three symbols on the side I looked at. This meant it was a 6 or 7. Either way was fine to me, so I didn't bother flipping it the other way and just moved my thumbs out of the way to see the number 7 printed there. I was happy with a 7 at this point, so I hoped for a face card for my second one. I squeezed slowly, and after a moment of hype I peeled it back to reveal... no marks. It was a no-side. This means it could only be an Ace, 2, or 3.

At that point I was confident. An Ace or 2 would be fine, that would give me a Natural 8 or Natural 9 and I'd win the game right there. So again I didn't bother turning it vertically and just moved my thumbs out of the way to reveal... a 3. A 3! A 3!! OF ALL THE THINGS, A 3! With this, my total was 10, which meant a score of 0! I was devastated, and threw my 3 down next to the 7 I'd already flipped over. The dealer casually took my cards and placed them next to the Player's. It was 3 to 0. Still, Player was forced to draw another card as their score was 5 or less. And when the man finished squeezing his new card and flipped it over for all to see, he revealed another 3. This meant my new score to beat was 6.

Trying to be helpful, the man next to me said "You need a 7." I was too nervous to come up with a sarcastic way to tell him I knew that already, so I just murmured "7, huh..." and took the card the dealer had given me. It's true, a 7 would win, but so would an 8 or 9. I hoped hard, and squeezed my card only to see a border, signifying a face card. It was a Queen, meaning my score was still 0. I watched as the dealer scooped away my $50 and matched all the Chinese man's chips up.

But I wasn't finished. I tossed in another $100 bill and as soon as the dealer gave me my chips I shoved them all on Banker with the $25 I had left. If I won this, I could make back everything I lost, and then some. But to my surprise, the Chinese man put another $500 down on Player. He was betting against me, this time! In the end, he got a perfect 9 after drawing his third card, so I had no hope but to get a tie and win my money back. I'd drawn two face cards so far, and my third card was a kick in the teeth, a third face card. So with the scores at 9 to 0, I lost my third hand in a row and walked away.

WOW, this is supposed to be the Mukoubuchi blog post isn't it? I kinda went on a tangent there. I'll just briefly sum up my opinions on this chapter. I liked how we got a break from Mahjong to play some Baccarat, but the mahjong part still was lots better. Kannagi is one of the only female characters who can actually play mahjong at a high level in this series, so it should be fun to see how she fares against Kai next chapter!