Tutorial System Unlocked!

James woke up with a start.

A small ray of sunshine had slipped through the cracks of the curtains blocking the only window in the room, and directly onto his face.

Half dazed, he slowly came to his bearings and sat up. Surely his recollection of the past day was a nightmare, or some sort of delusion. James looked at his surroundings - a desk, a chair, a couch, and he was seated on a pristine floor in a small studio room with what felt like the mother of all bruises on the back of his head.

Wait. What happened to the joker?

Just above his field of vision, he saw a faint glow. James raised his head curiously, but the glow remained stubbornly out of reach.

"Hello?" James said tentatively.

"HELLO." A loud voice boomed inside his head.

"Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. No way. What. What on earth is going on?"

"LOOK UP. WITH YOUR EYES. NOT YOUR HEAD."

"God. That is way too loud for how I feel right now."

James rolled his eyes upwards. As he did so, the glow came sharply into focus. It was a simple sentence.

---

[ God of Gamblers System v1.0 Installed ]

As he finished reading the sentence, it updated immediately.

[ Aural simulation disabled. Text-based communication preference selected ]

[ Tutorial System Unlocked ]

[ Achievement Unlocked: Wannabe. ]

[ So you want to be the God of Gamblers? Well, first you have to be a gambler ]

[ Reward: Basic Gambling Knowledge ]

[ Perk unlocked: Basic Gambling Knowledge - You now have an intuitive grasp of gambling probabilities. You also know the rules and common slang of each common game. ]

[ Everyone has to start somewhere. I just never thought anyone would be starting from so low ]

[ Mission unlocked: First Dollar - Spend $1 on the system to unlock the next step of the tutorial. ]

[ Current Money: $500. Current Winnings: $0 ]

---

James leaned back. He felt suddenly enlightened about the poker game he was supposed to play this weekend. Was this what his dad meant by a 'miraculous system'? James had originally thought it was some kind of betting logic, like the sure-win martingale system he'd read about once before.

[ Martingale System: Bet on a high probability wager (close to 50%) and double your bet each time you lose. For example: Bet $1, lose. Bet $2, lose. Bet $4, lose. Bet $8, win! Net win: $1 ]

[ What a crappy betting system. System cannot believe you are willing to compare System to Martingale. System will show you what is the true God of Gamblers System ]

But this. This was truly miraculous. It even seemed to have a personality, albeit a snarky one.

"Let's see. Spend $1 on the system. This is clearly a pay-to-win product. No wonder Dad never had much spare cash lying around... How do I interact with the system and how do I put money in?" James thought out loud.

[ System responds to your thoughts. System can also access your money from anywhere in the world. ]

[ Hehe. ]

"What an absolutely money grubbing entity this is. Alright then, let's use one of my precious five hundred dollars to see what else you can do besides take my money."

Five floors above and two doors over, on the floor lying by a broken piggy bank, four quarters mysteriously vanished.

[ You can only make progress in System using money you have won. However, System gratefully accepts your gift of a dollar. ]

[ Current Money: $499. Current Winnings : $0 ]

"..."

[ Hehe. ]

No wonder James' father took out as little money as he could from his winnings. Clearly all of the rest had been used to feed this greedy system. James also realized why his father did not just utilize the benefits of the system to grind a regular job and feed the system. Apparently, the system only liked the taste of ill-gotten gains.

[ Not true. System likes the taste of all money. System encourages you to win money because that is the only route to being the true God of Gamblers. ]

For a moment, James had forgotten that the system could read his mind. Looks like he had to be careful about what he thought in the future.

With one mystery partially solved, James glanced at his phone.

"Shit. I'm going to be late. I have a quiz today for Math too."

James took a final look at his surroundings. It seemed like this would be his hideout for the foreseeable future. Then, he swung his backpack around his shoulder and started the hour long walk to school.

--

An hour later, James panted as he ran into a nervously quiet classroom. A couple of his classmates spared him an irritated glance for interrupting their train of thought. He was truly late. The probability quiz had started half an hour ago, and there was only fifteen minutes left before the end.

"Nice of you to join us James. I hope you didn't have to cancel anything important because of this little thing we call class." The teacher at the front, Mr Lee, said sarcastically.

"Your exam is on your desk. You have fifteen minutes left. Good luck. You'll need it." Scattered muted laughter greeted Mr Lee's words as James sprinted to his desk and started flipping through the quiz.

James looked down at the first question.

Question 1: If you flip a fair coin twice, what is the probability of getting two heads?

[ 0.25. Each flip has a 50% chance of coming up heads. For two heads to happen, it is the multiple of the two probabilities. 50% multiplied by 50% gives you 25% or 0.25. ]

Finally! A genuine use for the system. Maybe if he fed the system enough money he would be able to get better grades in all of his subjects.

[ System can only help with gambling related questions. ]

What if he fed the system some extra money, he thought.

[ But everything is negotiable. Hehe. ]

James sped through a couple of other easy questions before coming across a harder one.

Question 4: If you took 5 cards from a standard 52 card deck, what is the probability of getting a royal flush?

[ Royal flush. The top ranking poker hand. It is comprised of the ten, jack, queen, king, and ace of a single suit. If the order of cards drawn does not matter, there are (52 x 51 x 50 x 49 x 48) / (5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1) = 2,598,960 possible hands from a five card hand. Since there are four possible royal flushes, one in each suit, the probability of a royal flush is 4 / 2,598,960 or 0.000154%. ]

Ten minutes passed as James sped through the rest of the questions with the help of his system.

After answering the last question, a particularly difficult one involving multiple dice, James stopped writing and sat back.

"Given up now, have we, Mr. James?" Mr Lee had noticed James' unusual actions and speed in going through the quiz.

"I'll just grade that right now then." The teacher walked towards James' desk and grabbed the quiz before strolling leisurely back to his desk.

"Hmm... hmm. Hmm... hmmmm... that's impossible!" Mr Lee exclaimed.

He had been observing James throughout the exam and knew that James had not cheated. James' eyes had never left the paper, and the room was too quiet for someone to have whispered answers or otherwise helped James. In fact, some of his later questions had even been beyond the scope of what he had taught in class or asked the students to review in the first twelve chapters of the textbook.

Was this possible? Could James be a natural genius at probability? James had only been an average student in all the other math modules so far. For anyone to have either passed the quiz in ten minutes or gotten a perfect score was truly out of Mr Lee's expectations, much less both at the same time.

"Ahem. Alright James. Well done. Congratulations on your perfect score. I believe you will be the highest scoring student as I do not think anyone else can get a perfect score. Come up front to my table and we will let you choose your prize." Mr Lee swallowed his hubris and announced in a more subdued tone.

At his words, a light buzz started around the class. A perfect score? In ten minutes? That was unbelievable. Maybe if it had come from one of the top students in the class, or even Phil, who could have bribed the answer key from Mr Lee, but James?

James stood up and walked towards the front of the class. He had forgotten about the prize, and was originally thinking that he had overdone it and stood out too much. Now that he had the system, he needed to keep a lower profile until he was able to ensure his own safety.

[ Being a genius at probability is the bare minimum for the God of Gamblers. ]

[ Don't forget to tip your system and rate 5 stars if you were satisfied with your service! ]

James ignored the system and looked at Mr Lee. He wondered what the prize could be.