Every hand was the present, but with the shoe there in the middle of the table both the past and the future were also the present. The three coincided. All three overlapped on the table. Once played, the two cards from that hand moved to a pile of cards face up next to the shoe, the cards that had been used in previous hands. They formed, in this way, another past. Several relative pasts were thus formed: the past of the discards piled face up next to the shoe; the past in the shoe, which was also the future; and the pasts of the rearrangements suffered by the shoe according to the gambler’s decision to hit on five or stand.
Several futures coincided as welclass="underline" the future of the shoe as initially arranged, as well as every future determined by the player’s decisions to hit on five or stand. Because the decision to hit was always present, always future, until the decision to hit, standing, you could say, was also a rearrangement.
Every hand was thus a kind of bridge, a crossroads where distinct pasts and futures were exchanged, and where, at its center, all the presents were collected: the present of the current hand, momentary, transitory; the present of the past of the pile of discarded hands; the present of the past of the shoe as it had been arranged initially; the present of the past of the shoe, now that, objectively speaking, the shoe was both a determined past and a determined future, and at once a past and a future from which rearrangement could be dealt.
And with each hand the different pasts and futures would coalesce and intermingle: for example, the first four cards dealt, two to the player and two to the banker — which could reach as many as six each if the player and the banker failed to reach the minimum score (four) — belonged to the past, or the future, of the dealer’s shoe: they originated from the two hundred and sixty cards stacked up inside the shoe and nowhere else. And the pile of cards face up next to the shoe consisted of cards that had originated in the shoe, and which had briefly been the deal — that absolute, coalesced present, which my eyes had seen on the table. A narrow relationship, therefore, unified all the states.
Also present were the precedent chaos, the coincident chaos, and the future chaos. The three coincided, actively or potentially. The precedent chaos coincided with the organization suffered by the cards in the shoe, and rematerialized as the coincident chaos represented by the cards that were piled face up next to the shoe, which it coincided with. And this chaos would undergo a transformation similar to the first — when the dealers shuffled the cards, organized them into several even piles, and combined them, ultimately, into a single column of two hundred and sixty cards before dropping them into the shoe. The precedent chaos was present in this act, as the organization of the shoe was determined by it. The future chaos, at once active and potential since it took shape from the chaos of the cards piled face up next to the shoe — and therefore consisted partly of this chaos and could only come from it — would ultimately be indistinguishable from this — the precedent — chaos and from the coincident chaos, since chaos is in itself indistinguishable and essentially singular. Each chaos was also the future chaos, and the arrangement of the cards and the transitory present of the deal were also part of the future chaos, since they would soon become it. And the three mutually coincident states of chaos, meanwhile, were coincident with the arrangement of the shoe, the present of the deal, and all the intersections of the past and the future that had been, were, or would be coalesced in it.
Each time the shoe resets, having passed through the original chaos in which the dealers’ distracted hands spread the cards in random piles over the table, a new arrangement is produced. As many possibilities for its arrangement exist as there are possibilities for arrangement among the two hundred and sixty cards, each one a fragment of the original chaos submitted to an organization by the reflexive movements of the dealers’ hands. As I see it, no arrangement could be identical to another, and even if in two of the arrangements the cards fell in the same order, the first arrangement still wouldn’t be the same as the second, and for this reason: it would be, in effect, another. On the other hand, it wouldn’t seem the same. There wouldn’t be a way to verify it. The task — a tedious and hopeless waste of time — would be dismaying from the start. And in any case, only the initial arrangement would resemble the other’s. Which is to say, only a given pathway or portion of the process could resemble a pathway or portion of the process of the other arrangement.
Because the other pathways or parts wouldn’t be the same. For that to happen, the following similarities would have to occur: first, the way the dealers shuffled would have to be exactly the same both times, and the way the cards were arranged would have to turn out exactly as before. A five of diamonds that appears in the shoe between a three of diamonds and an eight of clubs would need to come to occupy this location by the same itinerary as before — above a four of spades and a king of diamonds, under a queen of clubs, between an ace of hearts and a two of hearts, for example — something which, of course, is impossible to verify.
Also: every player dealt the five would have to choose the same in every case in each of the arrangements. Bearing in mind that there are players who tend to stand, and players who tend to hit sometimes and other times not, and players who tend to follow their gut when the cards are turned over, the possibility of repetition becomes practically impossible.
Finally: the pile of cards face up next to the shoe would have to be a arranged in the same way as the pile formed by the discarded hands of the previous arrangement. But that arrangement, because no one controls it, is impossible to verify.
In baccarat, ultimately, repetition is impossible.
The cards themselves are also particular. They’re at once significant and insignificant, and what they signify isn’t always the same. We could say that what they signify varies depending on the context in which they appear. The cards are significant on the obverse and insignificant on the reverse. The pattern on the reverse side, identical on all of them, does not signify anything; or at most one thing: its insignificance in respect to the significance of the obverse. In this way, the insignificance of the reverse signifies something.
The significance of the obverse, meanwhile, varies. The distinct values, one, four, nine, six, zero, change significance according to their location. An ace changes significance if it’s with an eight or with a nine. With an eight it signifies zero, with a nine it signifies nine, with an ace, zero. In a way, zero, not nine, is the highest number. Zero is the principaclass="underline" a nine is a nine from the reference point of the zero — you get nine when the nine incrementally approaches the zero it started from. And the nine, meanwhile, borders the zero. After nine there’s nothing, except zero; and zero, after nine, is a complete reset, from which you have to start counting again.
For example, a seven and a six, combined, usually make thirteen. In the game of baccarat they only make three. Counting up, six, seven, eight, nine — I’ve taken three from the seven, added it to the six, and made nine. After that comes zero, not ten. When I’ve reached the highest number, nine, the count rests and I go back to zero. I’ve used four from the seven and have three left. These three start counting from zero and end up at three. Every significance of the obverse signifiers is filtered through the principal signifier, which is zero, the ultimate number in baccarat. It is the reference point for the highest value, nine, and every time the numbers go beyond nine they must return to zero again, erasing everything up to that point and starting over again.