The Cassiopeia Club is cut into the top of a mountain and there is one way up to it, a cable car that leaves the valley station when the man in the booth decides it should.

Ten men in dinner jackets came up this week.

The house rule is printed nowhere and everybody knows it. The Cassiopeia does not pay the best hand in the room. It pays the man whose opponent did worse. You may lay down the finest cards of your life on that baize and go back down the mountain with your pockets turned out, provided you have been seated across from the right person.

Anselm Vare does not gamble. Vare does the placards.

Before the car arrives he walks the five tables with a leather folder under his arm, setting the little printed names down on the cloth, and then he stands at the window with a drink he never finishes and watches the weather come over the ridge. That is the entire scheme. Nobody has worked out how to beat it because there is nothing to beat. He decides who is opposite whom, and the mountain does the rest.

On the gallery above the floor there is a private room with a brass hundred screwed to the door.

Daniel had been standing outside it for three weeks.

Twice he had gone to the table needing one win and twice he had come back up the stairs and found the handle would not turn. This time Vare seated him across from Bolek, and dealt him a man nobody in the room had ever looked at twice.

Brock Bowers has been worth 3.94 a night all season. He fetches drinks. He stands behind chairs.

He sat down and put 35.3 on the cloth.

Bolek did not fold. He went to 119.28, which for Bolek is a genuine night's work, the best hand he has laid down in weeks, and it was short.

3.48.

The door on the gallery opened. Daniel went through it with one hundred career wins behind him, which is fifteen seasons of climbing this mountain, and the room did not stop for him because the room never stops for anybody.

Jack had come up the cable car on ninety-nine as well.

Vare had put him opposite Gabes, and Gabes arrived with his coat empty.

That is worth saying plainly. For three straight weeks Gabes has left money in his pockets — a man asleep in a bunkhouse, twenty points behind a locked door, a good hand held back for no reason anybody could name. This week he put down 148.54 and kept 1.5. Nothing hidden, nothing saved, nothing to answer for.

Jack managed 108.44. Eight of the nine other men in the room beat it. He went back down in the cable car with ninety-nine still against his name and two losses on the trot, and the brass door stayed shut.

Nate is on ninety-seven and climbing, three short, and he got there by doing something the house has always been happy to arrange.

He was seated across from Bryan.

Bryan played a flawless hand. Every card he was holding, he played. When the dealer cleared the table there was nothing left in his fingers — not one point on the bench, the second time in a handful of weeks he has emptied his hand completely, and it is the rarest thing anyone does at the Cassiopeia.

101.06.

The worst hand in the room. Every man on that mountain beat it. Nine out of nine, and the one sitting opposite him was Nate, who has now taken seven of the eight nights the two of them have ever spent at the same table.

Beaten by 42.04. Third in the league for efficiency all year, first actually, and 3-6, and back down the mountain in the dark.

Bill had the biggest stack of the night.

165.12, and there was not a man in the Cassiopeia he would have lost to. Vare sat him opposite Justin, who came up here holding first place, and Bill took 35.06 off him without hurrying.

And Justin walked out still top of the table, 6-3, because three men now hold that record and he has taken more off this season than either of them.

The house pays who the house pays.

Which brings us to the man who has taken more money out of this season than anybody alive and cannot get down the mountain with it.

Mario has 1294.44 for the year. Nobody is close. He sat down against Eric/Blakey, who have won twice in nine attempts, and he left 25.7 in his coat pocket — Alec Pierce with 16 in him, folded in the lining, in favour of Deebo Samuel and 4.9 on the cloth.

Eric/Blakey put down 161.18 and took the night by 15.3. Eight of the nine men in the room would have lost to them, which is the first time all season the seating plan has done them a kindness rather than an injury.

Mario is 5-4. At the cloakroom they handed him the belt.

By the time the last car went down, the gallery door had closed again with Daniel inside it, and the floor was being swept, and Vare was at the window with the folder open on the sill, laying out next week's placards in the dark.

He never looks at anyone's cards.

He only needs to know who is sitting opposite them.