Chapter 644: True and False Rules
"Royal… Flush?" Qi Xia frowned. "What exactly is the hand?"
"Specifically, it's a 'Straight Flush,' but the highest possible hand is 'Ace,'" Qiao Jiajin explained. "From 'Ten' to 'Ace,' that's five cards, all of the same suit. This straight flush is the biggest among all straight flushes, so it's called a 'Royal Flush.'"
Qi Xia looked at the Earth Monkey across the table, who was shuffling the cards, and thought about Qiao Jiajin's words.
Could a straight flush exist in this game?
This game used traditional festivals and the twenty-four solar terms. It very cleverly also included four seasons. That meant if you truly followed the rules of a 'straight flush,' to assemble the biggest hand in this game, you'd need five numbers, and all five numbers had to come from the same season.
At this moment, all the cards reappeared in Qi Xia's mind.
From 'Start of Spring' to 'Grain Rain' was one season.
From 'Start of Summer' to 'Great Heat' was one season.
From 'Start of Autumn' to 'Frost's Descent' was one season.
From 'Start of Winter' to 'Great Cold' was one season.
This step of calculation was a bit complex and took some time. Qi Xia turned all the cards into numbers in his mind, and finally added the twelve 'Festival' cards.
"Wait… twelve festival cards?"
Qi Xia frowned slightly, feeling that the traditional festivals he remembered seemed to be more than twelve. But why were some missing?
He listed all the traditional festivals he could think of.
Spring Festival, Lantern Festival.
She Day Festival, Shangsi Festival, Cold Food Festival.
Qingming Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, Qixi Festival, Zhongyuan Festival.
Mid-Autumn Festival, Double Ninth Festival, Xiayuan Festival.
Finally, Laba and New Year's Eve.
Not counting the traditional festivals of various ethnic minorities, there were at least fourteen widely known festivals alone.
But why did this deck only have twelve festivals?
Were two festivals removed for some reason?
Qi Xia quickly locked onto 'Qingming Festival'.
This festival was interesting. In this 'Synodic Month,' 'Qingming Festival' would only be written as 'Qingming,' just like 'Qixi.'
But besides being a festival, 'Qingming' was also one of the twenty-four solar terms. So there would only be one card with 'Qingming' written on it. It could be removed from the category of traditional festivals and considered a solar term instead.
That left only one extra festival. But among the remaining festivals, which one was completely different from the others?
"Cold Food Festival…" Qi Xia slowly opened his eyes. In his memory, only the Cold Food Festival was completely different from the others.
All festivals had a specific date on the lunar calendar, but the Cold Food Festival simply didn't.
Its date was the 105th or 106th day after the Winter Solstice, or one or two days before the Qingming Festival each year.
In a game that used precise numbers to compare sizes, the existence of such a special festival like 'Cold Food Festival' wouldn't allow the game to proceed smoothly, so it had to be discarded.
This left the remaining twelve festivals. Adding all the solar terms, that made a total of thirty-six cards. Now that all the card faces were clear, it should be possible to roughly infer the Earth Monkey's 'hidden cards' from everyone's 'visible cards' and the 'community cards' in the center of the table, increasing the probability of winning a bit more.
After listing all the solar terms and festivals in his mind, Qi Xia transformed them into sets of numbers in his imagination.
The calculation required for this step was quite heavy and took him a considerable amount of time.
Soon, only a large amount of numbers remained in Qi Xia's mind. All the numbers were arranged into four rows by season: spring, summer, autumn, and winter, each as a group.
But after inventorying all the card faces, the situation was still a bit strange.
Combined with the 'Royal Flush' Qiao Jiajin had mentioned earlier, although theoretically one could treat a season as a suit and form a 'straight flush' for that season, after surveying all the dates of the four seasons, Qi Xia discovered a bizarre problem.
Not a single season's date numbers could form a straight flush.
Because the first half of the year used 'falling on the sixth and twenty-first,' the dates had a large number of 'six,' 'two,' and 'one' digits. The second half of the year used 'falling on the eighth and twenty-third,' which produced many 'eight,' 'two,' and 'three' digits.
This relative monotony of numbers greatly reduced the possibilities for combinations.
Qi Xia found the situation quite intriguing. Although the ancients could never have foreseen that one day in the future someone would use the dates of the twenty-four solar terms to gamble according to the rules of Texas Hold'em, they still seemed to have deliberately avoided the possibility of a 'straight flush.'
Spring lacked a 'five,' summer lacked a 'three,' autumn lacked a 'six,' and winter lacked a 'four.'
Under no circumstances could five numbers appear in the same season arranged consecutively from smallest to largest, even adding the traditional festivals couldn't make it work.
This interesting situation actually felt somewhat wonderful to Qi Xia, as if he was making intangible contact across a thousand years with the generations who had compiled the calendar.
"Fist…" Qi Xia snapped back to reality and asked Qiao Jiajin, "Besides the 'Royal Flush,' what's the order of the other hands from high to low?"
Qiao Jiajin imitated Qi Xia's gesture, reached out to touch his chin, then disdainfully pulled his hand away. Coming back to his senses, he said, "Below the Royal Flush is the ordinary straight flush."
Qi Xia nodded after hearing this. The straight flush scenario could already be ruled out.
"Below 'Straight Flush' is 'Four of a Kind,'" Qiao Jiajin explained. "'Four of a Kind' means having four of the same number, like the hand you just won with."
"Got it."
"And below 'Four of a Kind' is 'Full House,' also called a 'Boat'," Qiao Jiajin extended both his hands, raising three fingers on his left and two on his right. "Simply put, it's three plus two: one number has three of a kind, another number has a pair."
"Okay."
"Below that is 'Flush,' meaning five numbers all from the same suit. Below 'Flush' is 'Straight,' which means you don't care about the suit, just that five numbers can be consecutive in value. Then, from high to low, it's ordinary 'Three of a Kind,' 'Two Pair,' and 'One Pair.'"
After listening, Qi Xia quickly thought about the possibilities of forming each hand, and soon frowned: "It seems the so-called 'Texas Hold'em' rules don't quite apply in this game."
"Baaaa…?"
"Some combinations that are hard to form in poker can be easily achieved in 'Synodic Month,' like a 'Flush,'" Qi Xia explained. "For example, if you manage to draw a 'Winter Solstice,' then the four numbers 'One, One, Two, Three' all come from 'Winter,' giving you a very high probability of forming a 'Flush.' So the weight of a flush shouldn't be very high."
"If that's the case…" Qiao Jiajin narrowed his eyes too, "Then indeed, some variations of Texas Hold'em adjust the rank of hands based on a different number of cards."
"So our next step is to form various hand types and let the Earth Monkey tell us the size ranking of the hands."
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