The dealer stands and explains why. I shrug. "Oh. Right. I hadn't see that, thanks." We live and learn. And crap, the old git gets a blackjack. I have eleven. Dealer offers me a double down, and the moment she explains what it is I can see it. Any other player would stand a pretty good chance of getting a ten, there being 16 of them in a deck of cards. Maths never was my thing but given that there are 13 cards in a suit and four suits in a deck that's better than one in four odds. For any normal person. But I knew that when the dealer turned over her hole card it would be a queen, giving her seventeen. With what I knew now, she would stand on that. The next card in the deck was an ace. If I drew that card I would have 12 or 22, so 12. I would lose my bet.<br/><br/>Worse, the next two cards were a four and a nine. so even if I hit, I would still wind up on sixteen, or twenty five. This was a no-win situation - a real Kobayashi Maru. My only option was to cut my loss and surrender the hand. And as that thought occurred to me so the next hand played itself out in my head. I grinned. "Surrender."<br/><br/>Yes I was certain, thank you. I got half my bet back. Then pushed the full amount back into the betting circle. Out came the ace. The dealer gave me a look that I couldn't read. I can't read faces, I can't count cards or do complex maths. The four went to Mr not so grumpy having won two hands in a row. The nine went face down to the dealer. And then came the reason I was grinning. A jack, face up on my ace!<br/><br/>Oh crap. I suddenly realised I was being too obvious. This was the same as betting consistently on winning numbers at roulette. "Uh, I think I'll quit while I'm ahead..."<br/><br/>I pushed a twenty dollar chip to the dealer. "Thanks. That was great fun..."<br/><br/>Except I could see a very short future, with a high probability, in which I was grabbed by a couple of guys with wires in their ears and bulges in their armpits. One possible future was there that didn't involve that... I walked back to the roulette table I'd been at earlier. The next three numbers were 16, 7 and 18. I bet a quarter of my winnings on 15. Then I bet a quarter on 8. Then I bet a quarter on 19. "Oh... oh well, easy come easy go..." I walked out of the casino a few dollars richer than I'd gone in, though.