Pokémon Detective Case Files.

The only slight difference between the scene and before was that the spot where Miss Naza and Shin-chan had been sitting was now empty.

They vanished as if they had used "teleportation," disappearing into some unknown corner of the cruise ship.

Unlike the satisfied onlookers, the Plasma Team members Vio brought aboard were shrouded in gloom. Amidst this atmosphere, three menacing-looking Plasma Team members went against the tide, surrounding the elderly gambler who had been making boastful comments during the live betting broadcast.

"Hey! What on earth happened? Why did Lord Vio lose?"

The male leader of the group asked this question without giving a chance to explain, slamming his large hand hard on the notebook that was open in front of the gambler, making a loud bang.

Another slightly shrill voice rang out from behind the leader—

"Didn't you say that Lord Vio's Lone Wave Algorithm was incredibly accurate and could calculate every hidden card on the table? Why did he fail in the final, most crucial gamble?"

This was a finance professional within the cult. He had previously been responsible for delivering checks, bonds, and other documents to the tenth-floor casino. Now, he deeply regretted blindly obeying Vio's orders and failing to advise his superior in time.

Now, Yueju holds these valuable financial documents in her hands, examining them one by one with great interest. The validity of these documents had already been verified by casino staff before the betting began; such blatant counting of the spoils was completely unnecessary and tantamount to humiliation.

Perhaps because he saw this scene, Vio, who was slumped in his chair on the big screen, looked even paler.

This naturally enraged the Plasma Team members who were originally scattered throughout the ship's cabins and whose mission was to prevent the Royal Union from absconding with the funds.

"Even if you press me like this, this is the result... I've been sitting here watching the game the whole time, and no matter what my opinion is, it has no impact on the betting."

The elderly customer, who exuded a scholarly air and whose demeanor was nothing like that of a gambler, scratched his head in distress. He looked older than Vio, whose hair was already gray.

"Did that casino owner named Yueju cheat? Can you tell?"

The one who lagged behind asked the question, his tone calmer than his two companions.

The bespectacled customer shrugged and responded in a questioning tone: "If Mr. Blueberry had made any suspicious cheating moves, do you think Dr. Vio, who was in that special gambling room, wouldn't have noticed?"

Seeing the three menacing guests fall silent, he seized the opportunity to add insult to injury, spreading his hands and saying, "At least I didn't see Mr. Yueju use any cheating methods. On the contrary, the dealer and Dr. Vio were clearly in cahoots. To lose the bet like that is truly..."

"It's none of your business to talk back!" The leader of the group slammed his fist on the table again, his anger almost bursting from his eyes.

Just as this team member was about to pull a Poké Ball from behind his robe, the Team Plasma member behind him stopped him in time and stepped forward to apologize.

“My companion may be being a bit rude, but we are really curious to know why Lord Vio lost the bet.”

The plasma group member bowed sincerely to the guest and spoke quite rationally.

"We can see that the hole card disguised as the 4 of spades was just bait to lure Lord Vio into making a large bet. What truly caused your downfall was the failure of your card counting technique in the final hand. Why did the theory that had worked so well in previous games fail at the crucial moment? We believe that perhaps you, sir, could explain it to us."

"Oh? I didn't expect there to be a few reasonable people among the Plasma Group's subordinates."

The alternating red-face and white-face interrogation technique seemed to work very well on this bookish guest, who readily accepted the apology and began to explain.

"Dr. Vio's clock face algorithm is indeed amazing. It can build a probability model for the subsequent deck by summarizing the open cards in the previous rounds of the game. But what really makes it a powerful tool for casinos is the clock face algorithm's ability to self-regulate and clean up false information. This makes it impossible for opponents to accumulate prediction errors by repeatedly bluffing and folding."

The older guest's glasses gleamed as he picked up his notebook from the table again, pointed to a spot on it, and said—

"That's why Dr. Vio was able to create the probabilistic wonder known as the 'Lone Wave,' perfectly predicting the hand that would be revealed. You see, in the sixth, tenth, thirteenth, and fifteenth rounds of the game, the doctor unhesitatingly placed heavy bets that did not conform to the optimal return-to-investment ratio. I have reason to believe that the doctor calculated the Lone Wave in these rounds. However, Mr. Lantau didn't respond to any of these heavy bets, cleverly avoiding the inevitable defeat."

“Yes, that matches your explanation in the hall earlier.” The Plasma Squad member listened respectfully.

"Then came the stalemate. In this final stretch of the game, the Doctor realized that Blueberry was using the betting formula to reverse-engineer the timing of his hand calculations. So he changed his strategy and began to deliberately place some seemingly irrational heavy bets to disrupt Blueberry's predictions. From this period onward, Vio's bets became increasingly daring, as he was looking for the final decisive moment, the opportunity to use Lone Wave to deliver the final blow to his opponent."

"But why did the game end like this even though Lord Vio has achieved so much? Shouldn't the clock face algorithm become more and more accurate as the game progresses?"

The loyal subordinate's voice trembled slightly as he considered a terrible possibility.

"Could it be that Lord Vio made a mistake in his calculations?"

"No, the doctor's calculations were flawless from beginning to end. Even if they were wrong, Vio still had ample time to recalibrate his algorithm during the period when the betting was interrupted and the stakes were raised. In fact, until the very last round of the betting, the clock face algorithm consistently produced the hand that Vio expected. That's why Vio mistook the Ace of Spades for a 4, because the 4 of Spades was one of the hand he had repeatedly calculated. The moment he saw that ambiguous figure, he subconsciously followed the illusion in his mind."

"You mean, that blueberry drew a card that Lord Vio hadn't calculated? How is that possible?"

The plasma cluster's soldiers looked on incredulously.

"If Dr. Vio's clock face algorithm is perfect, Mr. Blueberry certainly wouldn't have drawn such an unexpected hand as 10A."

It was well past evening when the elderly and frail guest yawned lazily, shook his head, and continued, "However, Dr. Vio's clock face calculation is by no means perfect."

"What do you mean?"

"The clock face algorithm proposed by the PhD student was a concept proposed in a paper thirty years ago, and the basic theory used in it is also somewhat outdated. Even at that time, its limitations were already vaguely revealed."

The elderly customer, who had appeared at the casino for reasons unknown, spoke slowly and undisturbed, his face showing a look of reminiscence.

"At that time, in the field of statistics for measuring uncertainty, the frequentist school, which was obsessed with the law of large numbers, was dominant. Scholars at the time even came to the ridiculous conclusion that the incidence of lung cancer was not related to smoking, but to the distribution of poison-type Pokémon in the local area."

He held up one finger.

"When the amount of data approaches infinity, the frequentist approach can indeed provide accurate estimates; however, infinity is a concept that is too far away, and when the prediction lacks data, the conclusion may be seriously biased—this is the flaw in the doctor's theory."

A barrage of questions followed.

"Didn't the professor notice this when he was studying the patterns in card games?"

"Then why was this loophole never exposed in all the games the adults had played before?"

The older guest gently pressed his hands together, as if to soothe the students who were speaking too enthusiastically.

“I have carefully read Dr. Vio’s doctoral dissertation on clock face calculation. Unfortunately, he was too arrogant and did not realize the existence of this flaw during his research. Although the doctor later continuously improved the algorithm to adapt the clock face algorithm to different application fields, these modifications did not really touch the core of the theory that had the flaw.”

The guests picked up their pencils again and wrote down lines of formulas in their notebooks. After several rough calculations, a number with a percentage sign appeared before them.

"Due to the self-correcting nature of the clock face algorithm, this vulnerability does not accumulate with the increase in the number of tests, but will appear with a probability of about 5% under certain special conditions. That's probably why Vio didn't notice his oversight."

"What were the specific conditions? What exactly was this oversight?"

A member of the Plasma Group asked in a dry voice.

"In the initial paper data, Vio repeated thousands of random clock calculation experiments to demonstrate the feasibility of the clock face theory. However, due to the experimental design, there was a huge oversight in the selection of these data. That is, in order to repeat a large number of experiments, he chose to use computer simulations to test the accuracy of the algorithm."

Is there anything wrong with this?

"Do you remember how Dr. Vio achieved final victory in Blackjack?"

As if using a "surprise attack" tactic, the guest suddenly asked.

"In blackjack, Lord Vio not only made a fortune by counting the frequency of high-ranking cards, but also calculated the shuffling rules for automatic tables... Wait, could it be that...!"

"As you discovered, Dr. Vio's clock face only works in computer simulations and on card tables where cards are cleaned according to a set pattern."

The mysterious, elderly gambler nodded and said—

“I have re-analyzed Dr. Vio’s paper. I found that the clock face algorithm can only make perfect predictions under pseudo-random conditions, while in a real, completely chaotic environment, there will be a 5% error. The former can be discovered by paying enough prediction costs, while the latter is completely unpredictable. Even the most sophisticated algorithm can only get approximate predictions. This is why Lanju was able to draw two cards that were not predicted by the doctor.”

"So, the adults' decision to select someone from the cult to be the card dealer was a fatal mistake?"

"You can think of it this way. In shuffling, even a complete novice who has just started playing poker can still shuffle the deck into a more complex order than a computer can calculate. That's the terrifying thing about complete randomness."

“But that’s still not right,” the shrill-voiced member of the Plasma Team interjected in protest.

"If that's the case, how do you explain the plasma cluster's 100% investment success rate in the financial field? The market and stock market are also completely random chaotic environments, right? Yet we can still calculate incredibly accurate solitary waves in them using Lord Vio's improved algorithm!"

"Although I know nothing about finance and economics, I can probably guess some of the reasons."

Facing the members of the Plasma Group, the guest wore a mocking smile and looked at the questioner with amusement.

"A solitary wave originally refers to a natural phenomenon on the water surface that can continue to exist undisturbed. However, plasma clusters are incredibly large. When your organization makes financial investments, you should have many helpers within the organization assisting your business. In that case, is it a naturally formed solitary wave, or a splash created by human actions?"

The finance staff from the plasma cluster were speechless.

Indeed, the Plasma Group has long-term goals, and for this reason, it is also an incredibly greedy organization. Ordinary profits are far from satisfying its appetite. Therefore, the cult does not rely solely on financial means to achieve its wealth-accumulating objectives; in order to establish an ideal kingdom on Earth, their methods are sometimes even more sordid.

For example, in the incident last month, the two sages, Vio and Rhodes, predicted that there might be a window of opportunity in the energy industry for small short selling, and carried out routine financial operations in advance.

However, almost at the same time as they made their predictions, Smura, one of the Seven Sages, coincidentally visited Lisswell City, a city in the United States known for its energy industry. A few days later, a loud explosion resounded throughout eastern United States.

The result was self-evident—Liyong City's largest power plant was reduced to ashes, while the Plasma Group, which had just made a short-selling investment, made a fortune.

Although Lord Smura must have his own motives, the reason he made things so out of control may also be due to considerations of cooperating with the Order's economic activities.

Within the Order, such examples are countless, to the point that they have become an unspoken rule. Whenever Team Plasma invests a large sum of money in a particular area, its subordinates in the real world will also secretly take action in accordance with the flow of funds.

How could a 5% probability of deviation possibly emerge under such a powerful external force?

"It's such a pity. With Dr. Vio's talent, he could have discovered and corrected this flaw. It's just that he abandoned theoretical research too early and couldn't wait to modify the formula and use it in these dark corners that can't be seen in the light of day. That's why this unexploded bomb in the paper has been hidden for thirty years."

It wasn't until today that it was truly detonated.

Vio paid an incredibly heavy price.

"Who...who exactly are you?"

The members of Team Plasma were completely stunned when they heard this, and stammered out their final question.

"I?"

The bespectacled gambler, who looked even older than Vio, paused for a moment, then said modestly.

“My name is Fischers, a retired mathematics professor, who came to this casino at the invitation of Mr. Blueberry. By the way, I was the one who cast the crucial dissenting vote thirty years ago when reviewing Dr. Vio’s clock algorithm paper.”

Chapter 181 A Desperate Struggle

Just as the three Plasma Squad members heard the math professor's name, in the glass gambling room, Blueberry, who was fiddling with checks, suddenly spoke up—

"If I want to leave now, I'll find that the only lock on the secret room door can't be opened, right?"

Seated cross-legged atop a sea of ​​banknotes, the gambling king casts his sharp, eagle-like gaze upon his opponent.

Unlike Pokémon battles, gambling between humans is not a game, but a war fought on the smallest unit. The loser cannot simply collapse on the roadside with mosquito coil-like eyes, and the battle cannot end in an instant with a clear winner and loser.

For Blueberry right now, the spoils of the Double Dragon poker showdown haven't been converted into cash yet, and his biggest rival, Vio, is still sitting nonchalantly in front of him...

This means that the betting game is not truly over yet.

As the evil-type king questioned him, the purple-robed old man, who had been keeping a blank expression, twitched his eyebrows. Just as Yueju had warned him, he instantly stopped acting and his dejected face turned gloomy and cold in the blink of an eye.

"I thought you'd be more interested in watching your opponent's embarrassing defeat, but I didn't expect you to be discovered so quickly... Is it because my performance was too exaggerated that it seemed abnormal?"

"Is this the impression the sages of the Plasma Group give off? They're either arrogant or paranoid; it would be abnormal for them to honestly admit defeat."

During their conversation, the live stream, which was connected to various screens on the Royal Union, was quietly interrupted, appearing to outsiders as a normal pause in playback.

Cranberry continued to reveal—

"Your men had already taken control of the exit of this gambling room long before the game was over, right? If I'm not mistaken, they've now blocked this room from the outside world. Otherwise, the ship's crew should have come here to collect the money when the duel ended."

The echo reverberated in the gambling room where only two people were present. The dealer, Mr. Tuan, had disappeared after the game ended... This also confirmed Yueju's guess.

"Not only that, but the Royal United is also being controlled by your subordinates now. The thirty members wearing Plasma Group uniforms who are following you are just a decoy. The real elites of the Order have already disguised themselves as gamblers and infiltrated the gambling ship. This is the real basis for your confidence in taking control of the gambling ship instantly."

“I knew I couldn’t hide it from you.” The old man nodded with a wry smile. “The security checks on the Royal Union only target gamblers with bad records in casinos, so it’s not difficult to have someone infiltrate them… Now it seems that this was one of your schemes to lure me onto the gambling ship, wasn’t it? In comparison, Your Excellency’s screening of staff is much stricter.”

"Yes, I personally recruited each of them. They are top elites in the casino and used to be very troublesome."

Lingju, who used to frequent casinos of all sizes in the United States, was quite proud as she waved the check in her hand and said—

"If they weren't on the ship, I wouldn't believe the value these colorful tickets represent. So even if you want to hijack the gambling ship, please try to be gentle with my staff, otherwise I might retaliate in some extreme way."

They intimidated each other.

First, demonstrate your respective strength and will, and then begin more formal negotiations.

This is a clichéd yet classic confrontation scene. If a Hollywood director or bestselling author were here, they would surely be moved to tears.

Vio sighed—

"The amount of money I lost to you is too large. If it is allowed to flow into the market all at once, it will not only devalue the assets involved, but will also undoubtedly deal a serious blow to the Order's position in the financial market. Neither I personally nor the entire Plasma Group can tolerate such a situation."

"So, how about I make a suggestion?"

The sage rubbed his wrinkled thumb and forefinger together, looking earnestly at his opponent who had defeated him.

"I hope you can deposit these written financial documents with me, so that the assets they represent can continue to circulate in the Plasma Group's cash flow. When you need money, I will withdraw cash in installments through the cult's channels and deliver it to you in an absolutely trustworthy manner. If you agree to this payment method, the cult will provide you with storage interest rates that are impossible to achieve through conventional financial management methods. At that time, the total amount stored might even double without you realizing it."

It seems that after the failure of mathematician Dr. Vio, financial expert Mr. Vio has now taken the stage.

Lingju chuckled lightly: "Minimizing losses, huh? What a cunning old fox."

“You’re the only one on the ship who has no right to say that to me.” The old man raised his eyelids and replied weakly, “This is a win-win situation without any pretense. If you were still a member of Team Plasma, you wouldn’t be able to refuse this proposal.”

Even now, with tensions running high, are they still trying to use my status as a Plasma Group member to control me? Such a struggle is rather unsightly.

The Gambler King shook his head in disappointment: "That's really unfortunate. Having made a fortune this time, I'm no longer interested in continuing to toil for Mr. Quixote's great cause."

Thus, they issued a blatant declaration of apostasy.

"Was everything you did over the past three months just for this moment?"

The sage lowered his eyes. Although he was mentally prepared, he still couldn't help but ask angrily after hearing the words.

Betrayed the alliance, defected to the religious order, and stole 500 million by flipping a coin.