Big Buddy session: Pemulis's three-card-monte lesson; the off-book trade

texture · 3 Nov YDAU

• When: 3 November YDAU — the twice-weekly Big Buddy small-group interval between P.M. challenge matches and dinner (034 datelined 1640h)
• What: In the Big Buddy sessions Todd sits in Michael Pemulis's four-kid group in Viewing Room 2, where Pemulis is running a mock three-card-monte hustle; Todd supplies the croupier vocabulary — "Or it's called the pot," laying a five on the ante-pile — the kind of worldly patter that has Pemulis marveling at kids who talk like veteran Jersey-shore croupiers. The same day's ledger, though, says Todd officially belongs to Hal Incandenza, who traded him to Trevor Axford off the books for Evan Ingersoll (whom Axford couldn't stand); "technically," the narration insists, Possalthwaite is still Hal's. And in Hal's own session down the hall, the challenge-ranking hierarchy places Todd above LaMont Chu ("you're under Chu, who's on an odd year and is under Possalthwaite," Hal tells Arslanian). The Big-Buddy assignment contradiction is carried as printed (see Dating notes).