Chapter 44: Chapter 43: Vermillion Arc

Tess was standing in front of a slot machine, Ava and Alice to her side. “Go ahead and put a little of your mana into the panel on the side.” She instructed. “The machine has to scan your Luck to know what odds to give you.”

Tess did as she was told, and soon a glowing “50” appeared on the panel. A moment after that, two boxes appeared to either side, one reading “adjusted” and one reading “standard”. “What are these?” Tess asked, looking curiously at them.

“It’s a way of changing the chance that each symbol comes up.” Alice explained. “It’s a way for people with high or low Luck to be able to have a fair chance at things. By selecting adjusted, the machine changes its odds so that, with your Luck, you’ll get things at the ‘normal’ rate with normal payouts. Standard has the machine not account for Luck at all, so the chances of you getting what you want might increase or decrease, but the payout will increase or decrease accordingly.”

Tess frowned. “And what if there’s someone with super high Luck? Wouldn’t they just win every time and always make money?”

“A good observation.” Ava replied. “Most machines have a cap on the positive odds, not letting people go past about sixty percent in their favor. And if you do have odds higher than standard, many places also implement an additional fee for playing at those odds. You’ll still make money if you win, but places have done the math; over the long run, the house always wins. Go ahead and put in some tokens and take it for a few spins on both settings.”

Tess inserted a token into a slot and pressed the “adjusted” button. The reels of the machine started to spin, so she pulled the lever and watched as they came to a stop. She won part of what she had put in back, but not the whole thing.

A few spins later and she had a sum that was slightly more than what she had started with, so she pressed the button that read “end” and gathered the dispensed tokens, inserting them again to try the “standard” setting.

The part of the screen that showed what each combination of things was worth changed, the numbers going up to reflect a relatively lower Luck. She won things a lot less often that time, eventually stopping once she was at around half of the amount she originally had. “Alright, I think I’m done.” She said. “Now what?”

Ava smiled. “What do you think about this system? Is it a good and fair one?”

Tess shrugged. “On paper, I guess. But…what assurance do I have that the adjusted probabilities are what they say they are? Couldn’t they tip things in their favor slightly so I’m not really getting normal odds?”

Ava nodded. “Good. There isn’t really a regulating body for this sort of thing, so this sort of scam is all too common. High profile places like this are generally clean, but there’s really not a good way of telling, so people have to get by on reputation. What else?”

“I…don’t know what Luck the machine is calibrated around, so I can’t confirm I’m getting fair odds that way, either? Also, there should probably be a cap on low Luck like there is high Luck, or at least a cap on number of successive tries with low Luck, since it seems to me like people will go on huge losing streaks there with no realistic chance of payout.”

“Excellent observations. Though, when it actually comes time to start cleaning things up, you might want to hold off on that last suggestion until things are somewhat under control. You’re going to get a lot of pushback on it, and it’s debatably less predatory, since people at least think they know what they’re getting into. Best to save that until you’ve established yourself more and can afford to throw that sort of suggestion around. Anything to add, Alice?”

Alice shook her head. “No, I…can’t think of anything off the top of my head. Do we want to move on to the next thing?”

“Yes, let’s.” Ava said, leading the group down past the slots and to another set of machines. They went through several different types of gambling machines like this, Ava pointing out how they could be rigged. They all had in common the “adjusted/standard” system, but aside from that they differed wildly in how they played.

Eventually, they had exhausted all the “simple” games, and it came time to get into the more complex ones.

“So, things get messy when you have multiplayer games, since everybody’s Luck is going to affect things in different ways.” Ava explained. “And that has a lot of potential for abuse. Right now, the only truly safe way to bet when multiple people are involved is in something that doesn’t have anything to do with Luck, like races. There are just too many factors otherwise.”

They stopped at what appeared to be a roulette table with a few people gathered around it. “But that doesn’t stop people.” Ava whispered. “They have all these formulas for how the odds change when people place their bets, but the system has a lot of problems. See if you can find them when we have a play, alright?”

“Ah, newcomers.” The man behind the roulette said. “Please take your seat at the table, we’ll begin in three minutes.”

Alice, Tess, and Ava sat down at a seat that was as far away from the other participants as possible. Like with the other machines, there was a plate to verify her Luck, so Tess went ahead and did so.

After she did, a display on the table lit up, showing all the different things she could bet on and the odds for each of them. Unlike with the single player games, there was no option to adjust for her Luck, so she punched in something that gave a decent return, putting about a fourth of her tokens as the bet.

As she did, the odds updated to account for her bet, and the screen displayed a message that read “One bet change used. Bets may be changed another two times before the round begins.”

“It’s a way for people to change their bets if the odds change to something they don’t like after the round starts.” Alice explained.

After three minutes, the display dimmed, and the man behind the roulette pressed a button, releasing a ball onto the wheel. It went around the edge a few times before eventually landing in the slot that Tess had bet on.

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A few people groaned and slid their tokens over to the man, who redistributed them to the winners, along with a couple of extra tokens he had to the side.

They played a couple more rounds before leaving. Once they were out of earshot, Ava asked the question she had asked Tess after every game they had played. “How could this be manipulated?”

“Um…I’m not sure how the odds account for that dealer guy. He would affect them, right?”

Alice nodded. “Yup. People just have to live with that fact and assume what the casinos are showing is accurate. That’s one way shady places get you.”

“And I can’t be sure whatever formula they use is accurate, right? I don’t have any idea how Luck affects things, so…”

“That’s another one.” Ava agreed. “What else?”

Tess frowned. “I…don’t know, I can’t think of any other obvious ones at the moment.”

“Sometimes casinos will hire people with high Luck to skew odds.” Ava explained. “They give their winnings back to the casino, which further puts the odds in favor of the casino. That one’s always a risk with multiplayer things, but there’s no way to be sure it’s not happening, so again we just have to rely on reputation.”

Tess frowned. “That’s not going to be fun to deal with. Seems a bit harder to police than everything else.”

“Just keep thinking about it.” Ava encouraged. “After we leave, I’d like to hear your preliminary thoughts and we’ll hash things out together. For now, though, let’s just keep going.”

Tess nodded, and the group moved on to their next activity. After about an hour or so, they had seen every type of gambling this casino had offered, and they retreated back to an exchange counter.

“Thank you for visiting the Vermillion Arc!” The cashier said. “How many tokens would you like to exchange?”

Tess placed their winnings, which amounted to just slightly more than they came in with, onto the counter, and the cashier took them, counted them up, and then gave some coins back. “There you are, come visit us again!”

They took the money and left. Once they were out of the casino, Ava turned to Tess. “So, what do you think of it, in general? I have a silencing spell up right now, so don’t worry about being overheard.”

“I dunno, it seems…complicated. It was a lot simpler on Mael where we didn’t have Luck to deal with.”

“Won’t be for long.” Ava replied, smirking. “But, do you think you can handle this?”

“I…maybe.” Tess said. “I was sort of thinking that the first thing I could get started with was introducing a standardized form of machine for stuff like slots. If I could somehow get in charge of the producers, then we could have machines that have my stamp of approval, which are guaranteed to be safe. Problem is, I don’t know how to manufacture those and don’t have the means to do that anyway.”

“I could help with that.” Alice volunteered. “I have the resources and it sounds like something that would make a lot of money, so don’t feel like you’re putting me out or anything.”

“Would you? That’d help out a bunch!” Tess replied enthusiastically. As silly as it sounded, she really hadn’t thought of having Alice help before. She had only been thinking in terms of what she, Fortune, and maybe Ellie could do, so the thought hadn’t even crossed her mind.

Ava nodded in satisfaction. “Good, that’s a start. Who’s going to do the math when it comes to Luck? You’re going to need to get those equations somehow.”

Tess blinked. “I was figuring I could just ask Fortune, she should know, right?”

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