[Illustration: 🃈 🃇 🃆 🃅 🃄] 72192 to 1 _=Royal Flush.=_ A straight flush which is ace high. [Illustration: 🃑 🃞 🃝 🃛 🃚] 649739 to 1 When hands are of the same rank, their relative value is determined by the denomination of the cards they contain. For instance: A hand without a pair, sequence, or flush is called by its highest card; “ace high,” or “Jack high,” as the case may be. As between two such hands, the one containing the highest card would be the better, but either would be outclassed by a hand with a pair in it, however small. A hand with a pair of nines in it would outrank one with a pair of sevens, even though the cards accompanying the nines were only a deuce, three and four, while those with the sevens were an ace, King and Queen. But should the pairs be alike in both hands; such as tens, the highest card outside the pair would decide the rank of the hands, and if those were also alike, the next card, or perhaps the fifth would have to be considered. Should the three odd cards in each hand be identical, the hands would be a tie, and would divide any pool to which each had a claim. Two flushes would decide their rank in the same manner. If both were ace and Jack high, the third card in one being a nine, and in the other an eight, the nine would win.
But to the telepaths, they were Dragons. In the fraction of a second between the telepaths awareness of a hostile something out in the black, hollow nothingness of space and the impact of a ferocious, ruinous psychic blow against all living things within the ship, the telepaths had sensed entities something like the Dragons of ancient human lore, beasts more clever than beasts, demons more tangible than demons, hungry vortices of aliveness and hate compounded by unknown means out of the thin tenuous matter between the stars. It took a surviving ship to bring back the news--a ship in which, by sheer chance, a telepath had a light beam ready, turning it out at the innocent dust so that, within the panorama of his mind, the Dragon dissolved into nothing at all and the other passengers, themselves non-telepathic, went about their way not realizing that their own immediate deaths had been averted. From then on, it was easy--almost. * * * * * Planoforming ships always carried telepaths. Telepaths had their sensitiveness enlarged to an immense range by the pin-sets, which were telepathic amplifiers adapted to the mammal mind. The pin-sets in turn were electronically geared into small dirigible light bombs. Light did it. Light broke up the Dragons, allowed the ships to reform three-dimensionally, skip, skip, skip, as they moved from star to star. The odds suddenly moved down from a hundred to one against mankind to sixty to forty in mankind s favor.
The interesting note was the way Sniffles handled my chips. Sometimes more sure than others, she occasionally let a winning stack ride. On other rolls, she keened and chanted oddly to herself, eyes closed, and pinched down most of the stock. But she was never on the wrong side of the Pass line. I kept track, not wanting my stack to build up past the thousand with which I had started. Most of all, I watched the skinny gal dope the dice, sniffle and wipe the end of her nose. She was one homely sharecropper, that was a fact, but she had a nice feel for Lady Luck. Or for what I planned next. * * * * * Wanting to come out with an even thousand, I adjusted the size of her last bet. When I won it, I pulled my chips off the table, which Sniffles didn t resist.
Sometimes he will sit N, sometimes S, and sometimes E or W, but he always finds his partner opposite him, and at the end of the game he will have had every other pair in the game for an adversary once, and will have played all the hands dealt. A different set of indicator cards is required for every different number of tables in the game. They are the invention of the late E.C. Howell of Washington, D.C., and have been arranged for any number of pairs from four to thirty-four. _=INDIVIDUALS.=_ When four play memory duplicate, one of the four, usually S, retains his seat and keeps the score, the others changing places right and left alternately, each playing with S as a partner for 8 hands. These changes successively bring about the three following positions:-- c | b | a a b | a c | c b S | S | S | | Hands:--1 to 4 | 5 to 8 | 9 to 12 For the overplay, the trays are reversed, the hands originally dealt N & S being placed E & W; but the players continue to change right and left alternately.
About a minute should be allowed for moving 30 men and a minute for each gun. Thus for a force of 110 men and 3 guns, moved by one player, seven minutes is an ample allowance. As the battle progresses and the men are killed off, the allowance is reduced as the players may agree. The player about to move stands at attention a yard behind his back line until the timekeeper says Go. He then proceeds to make his move until time is up. He must instantly stop at the cry of Time. Warning should be given by the timekeeper two minutes, one minute, and thirty seconds before time is up. There will be an interval before the next move, during which any disturbance of the Country can be rearranged and men accidentally overturned replaced in a proper attitude. This interval must not exceed five or four minutes, as may be agreed upon. (4) Guns must not be fired before the second move of the first player--not counting the putting down as a move.