She'll be waiting for her moment, but yes, she'll lean on her psychic reads to know when her moment arrives:  the true goal in hold'em is to wait for that hand when the opponent is confident enough to bet huge, but your own hand is good enough to beat him out.  She plays it straight until the hands come up where the rapper (or anyone at the table) bets big but her own hand is pretty great too.  Then she peeks into their thoughts, to learn what they're holding, how high they're willing to go, whether she can scare them off with an overbet, et cetera.

When such a moment arrives...

11:31, Today: Lucy Lopez rolled 7 using 2d6+1 ((2,4)).

Lucy wins the first game, then loses the second and third-- but it's because she folds quickly, so her losses aren't too bad. Then she wins the fourth game... She's now got 900 bucks.

There's just one problem-- the rapper (he IS a rapper, as it turns out) is Confident with a capital C. He's got even more confidence than he does money on him-- and he has a lot of money on him.

This is not a problem. The problem is that his Confidence is bleeding over to Lucy, thanks to her access into his mind.

(Lucy will get an extra +1 to her telepathy rolls until further notice-- but the penalty/penalties, if there are any, will be larger, too.

In fact, she wants to keep going and win MORE right now.

Or maybe get the guy to call the bachelorettes over.

Or both.

If she doesn't do one or the other (or both)? Then fighting that impulse is going to hurt, emotionally speaking...)

If she's been leaning on her psychic powers for a while and still doesn't feel the stirrings of one of her headaches coming on, then that's just going to bolster her confidence all the more.  She'll do -both-, keep trying to take the rapper's money -and- nudge him to invite the girls over.

When another moment to possibly win a huge hand arrives...

11:46, Today: Lucy Lopez rolled 7 using 2d6+2 ((3,2)).
This message was last edited by the player at 16:47, Tue 11 Aug 2020.

GAH, Lucy lost 200 dollars that round. Now she's down to 700.

However, it makes the rapper happy. He goes over to the bachelorettes and invites them over. Lucy doesn't hear what he says to them, but they do come over.

It turns out that he's staked them for the first round... (after that, they're on their own.)

This is gonna be a big pot.

(Try to use telepathy to try to win this...?)

Absolutely!  This is Lucy's moment, she can feel it!

12:45, Today: Lucy Lopez rolled 9 using 2d6+2 ((6,1)).

(GM draws cards...)

One of the bachelorettes has a pair of 9s (the rest have nothing).
Lucy has... a pair of 5s.
The rapper has... a pair of aces.

Now, that's not exactly good for Lucy. On the other hand, the gal with the 9s is clearly pleased, and the rapper has noticed, and it bothers him. He's considering folding, but hasn't made up his mind yet.

There's one chance for everyone to try to draw something better...

However... Lucy has one ace. So at least that lowers the odds of the rapper drawing another one...

No one else has a 5, but Lucy... (Then again, no one else has a 9 but the gal with two of them.)

But there's one more problem... checking on the bachelorettes has made Lucy feel a little drunk, herself.

What now?
--Play and pray?
--Try to plant one or more suggestions that BOTH the players who've got a pair fold? (After all, everyone's betting their own money at this point...
--Fold, yourself?

(Lucy's extra bonus +1 is now gone, counteracted by feeling kinda drunk.)

If the rapper is already considering folding, Lucy is pretty sure she can scare him off the pot with a big bet.  The girl with 9s feels like more of a problem though: if she's so happy with just a pair of 9s that the rapper is considering folding his aces, she's probably not savvy enough at the game to get scared.  Lucy will just call the bet on the table, no raise, and see how the hand plays.  Maybe she'll hit another 5!

She's forcing herself to stick to her preferred disciplined approach, despite the psychic wooziness coming off of the drunk girls.  Slow, steady, conservative play, waiting for your moment and them pouncing all over the big hands, that's how to win money at poker.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:34, Tue 11 Aug 2020.

(GM draws cards...)

Lucy gets a 6. No help.

The other bachelorettes fold, except for the gal with the 9s. She doesn't look like she got anything better.

Without using telepathy, it's impossible to tell if the rapper got anything good or not... but did definitely looks like he's not going to fold...

--Fold?
--Use telepathy?
--Keep calling?

Fold.  She's drawing against two other players who already have better hands than her, that's begging for disaster.  Her moment will come, eventually, and she'll play it hard when it does, but this didn't turn out to be it.

The rapper wins-- turned out he drew a 6 himself, and he already had one, so he finishes with 2 pair.

Lucy lost another 150 bucks, but it's a good thing she folded when she did.

Current total: 550 bucks.

--Keep playing? (The Confidence with a capital C has mostly worn off now...)
--Go to bed and try to sleep off this half-drunk feeling?

(If you keep playing, I can speed the evening up a bit...)

Lucy's decision points will be when she's either down to just enough money to cover her room the night, or up to enough money to cover her whole next week.  A week will be enough time to put together a plan for getting out of Atlantic City, maybe up to New York, maybe the City or maybe one of the Indian casinos upstate.

When either of those two moments comes, that's it, Lucy cashes out and heads for the front desk to get a room.

(GM rolls dice... and it doesn't go well.)

Lucy keeps playing, but it doesn't go well. She stops when she's down to just enough money to cover her room for the night.

Well, even psychics have an off night once in a while.

Lucy cashed out, gets a room, and plans to get back to the tables tomorrow.

The night passes uneventfully...

...In the morning, both the Confidence and the Drunken feeling have entirely dissipated...

Then it's back to the hold'em tables!  Lucy needs to get together enough of a stake to cover her move to a new town, one where psychics aren't getting gunned down in casinos.  Not that Lucy has any suspicion that that guy was killed because he was a psychic, she suspects probably he was killed because he tried scamming the wrong sort of people.  But still, it was enough to get her attention.

(GM rolls dice...)

This morning, things are going much easier. Lucy is able to do well without pushing her power, just taking the tiniest peeks, or of eavesdrops if one prefers, into the other players (and dealers') surfacemost thoughts...

Soon she has ALMOST as much money as she wanted... but she's getting hungry... Time for a meal? Or push a little more...?

... is Lucy picking up anything interesting from the dealers?  They shouldn't have any relevant information, right?  All they should be doing is just distributing random cards.  If Lucy catches any thoughts that actually affect the game from them, this turns into a whole different kind of scenario.

As to the game though: this is a marathon, not a sprint.  She'll cash out for the moment, take two-thirds of her money up to her hotel room and stash it in her backpack, then stop by one of the casino restaurants for a sandwich or something.  Then she'll take what she's got on hand, and try to repeat the morning's success.

Lucy goes to her room and stashes most of her money in her backpack.

She's just about to go down and get a sandwich or something when she notices her hotel-room phone flashing. She's got a message.

On a hunch, she looks at her phone-- she's got a couple of voicemails there, too.

(Which does she check first? Or does she check either of them right away?)

... that's weird.  Nobody should even know I'm here.

Are the voice mails on her phone associated with a phone number she recognizes?  Or just "unlisted number" or whatever?

She'll check the hotel phone's messages first.  Maybe it's just housekeeping or something?  In her mind though, she's already halfway poised to bolt, ditch the burner phone, and get the hell out of town, with or without a plan.

No, just a number. Not one she recognizes.




"Yes, Miss Lopez, this is the front desk... There's a detective..." --sound of a piece of paper being consulted-- "Delancy who would like you to call him... He's wondering if you might have been a witness to a crime that happened at a different hotel a couple of nights ago... Here's his number, and he'd like you to call him back as soon as you can... He said something about a teenage girl in another hotel room or something... Thank you..."

Hm, turns out that Delancy's number is who the two voicemails on the burner phone are from...

(Unless Lucy didn't give her burner phone number to the front desk at either hotel, in which case there are no voicemail messages on her phone, but I figured she would because why wouldn't she...)

... fucking pig cops!

The cops taking even the slightest tangential interest in Lucy is far more unsettling to her even than watching a random stranger get gunned down twenty feet away from her.  Time to go; if the porcas knew what room she's in then the room is no longer a viable sanctuary.  "Almost" as much money as she wanted is going to have to be enough.

She hasn't even really unpacked from the night before, so getting herself ready to GTFO is a function of less than a minute.  And then she's out the door, intending to be on the bus out of Atlantic City and out of New Jersey completely within the hour.  She'll decide where she's going when she gets to the bus station, though she's leaning towards New York City.  It has to be pretty easy for a girl to get lost and anonymous with ten million neighbors, right?

She powers down her phone and takes the battery out, dropping them both into her jacket pocket.  She doesn't really have any clue whether that's a useful precaution to take against tracking her, but she's seen it in movies, and it only takes a couple of seconds, so why not?  She intends not to even power it up again until she's at the bus station, then she'll at least listen to the motherfucking cop's messages before she ditches the phone and boards her bus.

Nothing interferes with Lucy's relocating to the bus station.

Voicemail 1: "...Yes, Miss Lopez, my name is Aaron Delancy, and I'm a detective with the ACPD... I'd like to talk to you about you possibly being a witness to a shooting that happened recently in the restaurant of a hotel and casino here in Atlantic City... A woman who might be you was definitely a witness to the crime... and also, there was an unusual thing with a young homeless woman named Violet Wells in your hotel room... Please call me back at..." He gives his number.

Voicemail 2 is pretty much the same thing, except that in it Delancy sounds more tired and weary and irritable.
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:01, Wed 12 Aug 2020.

Hmm, a conundrum.

On the one hand, nunca hables con los cerdos.  Everyone knows this.  This is holy scripture.

On the other hand, maybe she can maneuver the cop into telling her who the killed man was?  And also she's curious what he's talking about with Astrid / Kate / Violet.

She frowns at the phone for a long moment, pondering.

Then she dials the cop's number.  She has fifteen minutes before the bus to NYC leaves, she can spare a few minutes.

"This is Lucy Lopez," she'll say, when (if) he answers.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:53, Wed 12 Aug 2020.

"Ah, Miss Lopez, good, good! Glad to hear from you... This is Aaron Delaney, ACPD... I'd like to talk to you about a shooting that happened a couple of nights ago at the Ocean Casino and hotel...? Did you happen to witness anything like that...?"

"Yeah, I was on the other side of the restaurant.  I didn't see anything though, it just looked like that gringa just shot that guy for no reason.  And then I just got out of there, I didn't know what the fuck was going on."