_POKER

Location / Chicago / The Wards / Parker Square / The Loop / Mad Mile

There are four running poker games throughout Chicago, and they’re all looking for a fourth player. If you have the cash to buy in, you can sit down for a friendly game of Texas Hold ’Em and take these guys for all they’re worth.

ANTE UP

The stakes for a poker game are determined by the game’s location. In the eastern Wards, there’s a low-stakes game that only requires a $100 buy-in. A medium-stakes game, for $1,000, is available in a basement in northern Parker Square (which you may remember as the game you interrupted when you met Tobias). You can play a high-stakes game in an old jazz club in the northern Loop for $10,000. Finally, if you’ve got money to burn, there’s a super-stakes game in the Mad Mile that requires a cool $100,000 buy-in.

When you sit down to the table, you automatically buy enough chips to participate. If you walk away after any hand, you trade in any leftover chips for their cash value. It’s thus possible to win a few hands for quick cash, then quit while you’re ahead.

IT’S ONLY CHEATING IF YOU GET CAUGHT

You might think that Aiden’s technical abilities wouldn’t apply to a game of Texas Hold ’Em. You would be mistaken.

Three out of the four poker tables in the city have a security camera somewhere nearby, which you can hack into and use to view your opponents’ cards.

Your best opportunity to do this is to view the camera feed while the initial hand is being dealt, which allows you to catch a brief glimpse of other players’ hands when they pick the cards up to look at them. This only works for two out of the three players at the table due to the angle at which the camera’s mounted, and the software needs a couple of uninterrupted seconds to recognize both cards in the hand. Even if you just get a look at one card, however, it can be an unbeatable edge.

Unfortunately, the players at the super-stakes table in the Mad Mile have set their game up in one of the few places in Chicago that’s out of the ctOS’s sight, so there’s no camera there for you to use.

A second way you can cheat is by using your phone’s facial recognition software to monitor the other players’ stress levels, which only uses your phone’s basic profiler. You can only monitor one player’s stress per hand, so save this option until it’ll do the most good.

As a rule, players’ stress hovers around 30 percent under ordinary circumstances and goes up dramatically as the pot gets larger. If you don’t know what cards they’re holding, you can use the stress monitor to make an educated guess; the higher their stress, the less faith they have in their hand.

TEN TIPS

Patience is a virtue. Even if you cheat on every hand, you can’t expect to speed through a game of poker. Don’t try to clean anyone out if you have a limited amount of time to play.

Know when to fold. There’s no reason to spend additional money just to see how the hand will turn out. As a general rule, if you don’t have any good cards once the flop hits the table, you’re better off folding.

When possible, aggressively pursue and eliminate the player who’s sitting in the chair that faces the security camera. Save your stress monitor for him and try to get him to go bust first. Since you can’t use the camera to look at his cards, he’s the biggest threat at the table.

When playing to eliminate, remember that it doesn’t matter whether or not you win the hand as long as your target opponent does. You have a different goal. It’s worth losing a couple of hands, especially if you can still maintain a lead, if it means you’re weakening your target opponent.

Be careful when using the Skip Ahead button, as you may inadvertently miss the window in which you can look at your opponents’ cards.

It is rare for a CPU player to even try to bluff. If your opponent is bothering to raise the stakes, he probably has something. Check his stress, however; if he’s raising the stakes with a high stress level, he may not have as good of a hand as his betting would indicate.

You can bluff all you like, however. You can sometimes “buy the pot” by throwing out large bets. Your opponents often won’t be willing to keep up.

Don’t chase the best cards. Most hands will be won with one or two pairs. It’s tempting to stay in a game because you almost have a straight, but it’s very rare that you’ll get exactly what you’re looking for.

An opponent is more likely to call your bet if you raise in small increments. If you just throw money on the table, you may win the hand, but most of your “winnings” will consist of your own bet. You earn more cash by slowly fleecing an opponent over the course of several rounds of betting.

If you’ve got a high notoriety, play at the games in the Loop and Parker Square. They’re off the street, so no random passersby will see you and call the police.

MISSION REWARDS

• Defeat all three players at a table: Sayonara LE (Vehicle)