As far as large losses and large gains were concerned, Ronicky Doone was ready to handle the bets of anyone, other than millionaires, without a smile or a wince.
The trouble with McKeever was that he was playing the game too closely.
Long before, it had been a maxim with the chief that a good gambler should only lose by a small margin.

That maxim McKeever, playing for the first time for what he felt were important stakes in the eyes of Fernand, followed too closely.

Stacking the cards, with the adeptness which years of practice had given to him, he never raised the amount of his opponent's hand beyond its own order.

A pair was beaten by a pair, three of a kind was simply beaten by three of a kind of a higher order; and, when a full house was permitted by his expert dealing to appear to excite the other gamblers, he himself indulged in no more than a superior grade of three of a kind.
Half a dozen times these coincidences happened without calling for any distrust on the part of Ronicky Doone, but eventually he began to think.
Steady training enabled his eyes to do what the eyes of the ordinary man could not achieve, and, while to Jerry Smith all that happened in the deals of McKeever was the height of correctness, Ronicky Doone, at the seventh deal, awakened to the fact that something was wrong.
He hardly dared to allow himself to think of anything for a time, but waited and watched, hoping against hope that Jerry Smith himself would discover the fraud which was being perpetrated on them.

But Jerry Smith maintained a bland interest in the game.