Gambling God - Part 1
This is a thriller story happened in Macau.
Once upon in 1970. Macau has been a city of gambling and high society where many rich businessmen and professionals gather for the glamorous life style. Every weekend, they would congregate at private clubs to gamble, socialise, drink and watch entertaining performances.
Tom, Jerry and Sylvester were good friends who often roam these private clubs every Friday night, this night they came to a lavish club for the same reason, but this time they were on a mission to see a beautiful lady performer who they heard from a rumour.
They were told that this beauty has delicate skin, gorgeous facial features, long silky hair, average height and a slim body. She has been a super star in the club. However, she has one defect, that is she has one finger missing on one of her hands but nobody has seen it because she always wears white gloves.
Every Friday night the 9 fingered beauty would sing a few songs then the main event would follow. She would rally the crowd for a guessing game, it was to guess which of her fingers is missing. The price was, the winner gets to be friend with her……..
The bizarre rumour is that nobody has ever guessed it right.
The three friends were curious and have been drawn to visit this club to see it for real. They heard that each person can guess a maximum of three times for a cost of 300 dollars. There was a speculation that a person has guessed 15 times before but unable to get it right. It sounded impossible as the chance of getting it right each time was 10% or more until it reaches 100% certainty after 9 trials, because there are only 10 fingers.
Sylvester herded with Tom and Jerry to form a cooperation plan to debunk this, simply by having each to guess 3 fingers at a time, by doing so, they would have ascertained which is the missing finger in the 10th trial. The plan was to have Tom to select the left pinkie, ring finger and middle finger, Jerry to select the left index finger, left thumb and right thumb, and he would select the right index, middle and ring finger.
Into the night, there she comes, the 9 fingered beauty gets on stage to perform a few songs, and then she rallied the crowd to join in her missing finger guessing game. Tom put up his hand and was led to centre stage with a table that has a black cloth on top. The 9 fingered beauty put out her hands with white gloves on the table and asked Tom to put out 300 dollars for the bet.
As planned, Tom guessed 3 fingers and the 9 fingered beauty asked him to feel which finger was missing. He was wrong on all three. The crowd mingle with each other. Next was Jerry. He put out the money and guessed the next three fingers and felt them and he was wrong too.
The crowd mingled again and appeared unsettled.
Last was Sylvester. He guessed the next three fingers and felt them, but he was also wrong. The crowd gazed in awe.
By now, only the right pinkie was the unknown finger. Whoever comes up to guess would be the winner, but the 9 fingered beauty announced the end of the game for the night.
Sylvester stopped her and said confidently ‘I can get it right if I were allowed to guess one more time’.
The 9 fingered beauty said politely with a smile ‘This gentleman, you are only allowed to guess three times, otherwise you would have broken the rule’
Sylvester uttered in a persistent manner ‘I am willing to put down $500 as the bet’
The 9 fingered beauty paused momentarily and said ‘I can allow you to take one more guess if you put down $5000.’
Sylvester was perplexed by her confidence and mysterious smile, but when he was reassured by the fact that there was only one unknown finger, he agreed to put out $5000 for the bet and point to her right pinkie and then squeeze it to feel its presence.
But he felt it was as soft as a human pinkie.
The 9 fingered beauty smiled pleasantly and said ‘Sorry, This gentleman, you are wrong again!’
Sylvester was bewildered momentarily and then protested by looking back at the crowd and said ‘That is a scam guys, tell you the truth, the previous two people who guessed it wrong were my friends, we cooperated together to debunk this by guessing the 9 fingers with my fourth guess on the 10th finger. One of us is certain to be a winner for tonight’ He then turn to the 9 fingered beauty and said ‘You need to take off the gloves and let us see the missing finger’
The atmosphere turned tense but the 9 fingered beauty grinning cheerfully at Sylvester and stated ‘I can reveal my hands to you by taking out my gloves but you need to put down another $5000’.
Sylvester was troubled because he only has $2000 left in his pocket, but his mind clicked quickly then he turned to the crowd and asked if they would fund the remaining $3000 to make up the $5000 bet. The crowd were as perplexed as him but many nodded their heads to agreement for the crowd funding of the $5000 bet.
The money was quickly gathered onto the black table on the centre stage, the 9 fingered beauty then raised her left hand and use her right hand to take out the left white glove to reveal the fingers, Sylvester and crowd watched with tense and were stunned to see her left index finger was missing. Everyone was intriguing to the fact that she allowed Sylvester to thoroughly examine the missing finger on her hand by touching.
The 9 fingered beauty then thanked the crowd with a bow and then walk behind the curtains of the stage………to be continued in Gambling God-Part 2.
