“To satisfy my own curiosity, then.” The manager flipped the top card delicately. It was the ace of hearts. “No compulsion, of course, but would you mind telling me how you can _possibly_ do what you have just done?” “I’ll be glad to,” and this was the simple truth. Cloud had to explain, before the zwilniks began to suspect that they were being taken by an organized force of Lensmen and snoopers. “We aren’t even semi-habitual gamblers. The lieutenant-commander is Doctor Joan Janowick, the Patrol’s ace designer of big, high-speed electronic computers, and I am Neal Cloud, a mathematical analyst.” “You are ‘Storm’ Cloud, the Vortex Blaster,” the manager corrected him. “A super-computer yourself. I begin to see, I think . . . but go ahead, please.” “You undoubtedly know that random numbers, which underlie all games of chance, must be just that—purely random, with nothing whatever of system or of orderliness in their distribution. Also that a stacked deck, by definition, is most decidedly _not_ random. We were kicking that idea around, one day, and decided to study stacked decks, to see how systematic such distributions actually were. Well—here’s the new part—we learned that any dealer who stacks a deck of cards does so in some definite pattern; and that pattern, whether conscious or unconscious, is always characteristic of that one individual. The more skilled the dealer, the more complex, precise, complete, and definite the pattern. Any pattern, however complex, can be solved; and, once solved, the cards might just as well be lying face up and all in sight. “On the other hand, while it is virtually impossible for any dealer to shuffle a deck into a really random condition, it can approach randomness so nearly that the patterns are short and hence very difficult to solve. Also, there are no likenesses or similarities to help. Worst of all, there is the house leverage—the sevens of hearts, diamonds, and clubs, you know—of approximately five point seven seven percent. So it is mathematically certain that she and I would lose, not win, against any dealer who was not stacking his decks.” “I . . . am . . . surprised. I’m _amazed_,” the manager said. He was, too; and so was the host. “Heretofore it has always been the guest who loses by manipulation, not the house.” It is noteworthy that neither the manager nor host had at any time denied, even by implication, that their games of “chance” were loaded. “Thanks, immensely, for telling me. . . . By the way, you haven’t done this very often before have you?” the manager smiled ruefully. “No.” Cloud smiled back. “This is the first time. Why?” “I thought I would have heard of it if you had. This of course changes my mind about wanting to deal to you myself. In fact, I’ll go farther—any dealer you play with here will be doing his level best to give you a completely random distribution.”