Usogui - Vol. 43 Ch. 463 - Fukurou's Failure

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Hal deliberately made an invalid hand to preserve the strongest card. And he will continue to do so. This fact is known by fukurou after his fortunate invalidation, and he let go the only chance to win by chickening out.

Fukurou's mistake: he should've made an invalid hand over and over again during the 4th round. That way, the time will keep running and usogui who has less bios than lalo would ran out first.

Basically by proceeding the game at the 4th round, he folded (mind blown). The reason he chickened out is that there's always a chance that Hal would suddenly make a correct hand after rounds of remake and defeat Fukurou, but Fukurou feared the pain too much and bet on Lalo to have a stronger 5th hand. Rather than duking it out, he bet on Lalo.

The mystery is how Hal knows that Usogui has the strongest 5th hand, since saving the 5th hand only work if Hal knows Usogui's hand.

Oh well, this is my theory.
 
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@Petrichormus
The mystery is how Hal knows that Usogui has the strongest 5th hand, since saving the 5th hand only work if Hal knows Usogui's hand.

Hal knew the remaining number after counting the total of the numbers used to deduce that usogui had 25, since they both had a half and then all his numbers would add up to give 25 for the last card.
It can be done since Baku sort of did it here
https://mangadex.org/chapter/856680/4
 
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@nareks
If you go off the assumption that Baku has about half the deck's worth of cards, and also assume that Baku has a second straight, Hal would consider Baku's last card to be 30, not 25. Even if you expand the range so it's not exactly half the deck, it could be 25, 30, 35, or even 40. It can't be done that way. Hal either figured out that Baku wanted to fold the 4th round and worked from there, or he somehow knew the entire plan in some other way.
 
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@veshv @nareks @petrichormus

There are a few moments in the gamble that have yet to be explained but could contribute to Souchi formulating a strategy:

[ol]
1. Souchi has a flashback in chapter 356 of Usogui giving Souchi his nickname "Hal" in chapter 316 by considering the parallel between the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. For those of you who don't remember how Usogui picked the nickname "Hal" for Souchi, it worked like this: Hal's fake name is "Hachina" -> sounds like "Hachi Nana" which in Japanese would be "87" and shifting it forward would be "98", which refers to PC-9800 made by Japanese computer manufacturer NEC, the Japanese equivalent of US's IBM. In the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, the rogue AI computer is named HAL, which was created by shifting the letters of IBM once character forward in the alphabet. Usogui picked up on this parallel and called Souchi "Hal" as a result.
2. Usogui carved something on the table that was noticed by Lalo and suspected to be a memory trick to keep track of cards that were used, but it has yet to be confirmed exactly for what purpose Usogui did this.[/ol]
I'm not sure if #2. is related, but #1 almost certainly is. I hypothesize that Souchi deduced that he should also "shift the win" one round forward.

Another way he could have used that information is to notice that Usogui's 4th round number was 26 and shifting that one forward would get you the number 25, his final round number. Now this would obviously be a huge stretch without other supporting pieces of evidence, but these are just some of the threads I'm pulling together.
 
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All in all, the relationship between Hal and Usogui was just too strong.

@Petrichormus
I believe that is on the right track, and why the chapter is titled this way. I don't know if Fukurou would have known that is exactly why Hal made a mistake; he could have very well believed that Hal was out of commission due to the Pain. But he should have known something was wrong, especially with all the crazy shit Hal was talking about, and if he made another mistake he might have guessed it out. However, Fukurou was so relieved to not have to face the Witch Pain after his mistake, that he just went ahead and made the strongest hand anyway so he wouldn't have to face the pain. He presumably was betting on Lalo forcing Baku to give up a lot of Bios in that round and that Round 5 wouldn't matter. And yet, when the machine went to punish him in Round 5, he already knew he had fucked up.
 
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all these theories are great but didn't shion mention fukurou didn't make any mistake and it was lalo with -ve 10000 points
 
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@darkknight42062
Correct, except forcibly looping the round would in a literal sense, be a mistake. The point here is that Fukurou failed because he specifically did not make the mistake. However, he couldn't have known if it would be to his benefit or not to forcibly loop the round, since he does not know the Bios situation in the lower level.

Do we know what the last Witch Pain is? Gunshot to the head was the previous round, right?
 
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@darkknight42062
Fukurou didn't make any mistake during round 5, since his last job is make the best hand and he did. Even during round 4 you can arguably say he didn't make a mistake. He simply let go the chance to do better.

His decision to not challange Hal into rounds of remake is very reasonable. Fukurou did not know whether Hal's mistake is deliberate or not. Or if Hal knows Usogui's hand. Or the number of bios actually at stake. Or how much more his or Hal's body can endure pain. The idea of Hal making an invalid hand to preserve a hand is too wild of an idea in a game like air poker, where information is limited.

About Lalo's minus 10000 sp, I think it's about the fact that after the perfect 1 bios scan, he didn't fold. Baku put on crazy mind game with the broken glass and Lalo failed to notice the fact that Usogui played a 26 before a 25, even though Ideally he should've played 25 in the 4th round. "Why would Usogui play 26 if not to preserve a straight flush?" This question didn't come to Lalo's mind because he's too busy thinking about the broken glass and fold/not fold.
 
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Fukurou couldn't possibly know Hal knew Usogui's next number. Hell, even we as readers still don't know how he did it, and he has way less informations than we do. The blame is all on Lalo.
 
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@Veshv Did we ever get all 5 revealed? Gunshot was the previous round, yes. I'd laugh if the last one is drowning.
 
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@Lithe
I think we saw death by shooting and burning, and impalement in card form, but we weren't shown what all 5 were. It'd be quite poetic if the last Witch Pain was drowning though.
 
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Ultimately I think its poetic, I feel like this all comes back to what we learned long ago with Usogui's relationships as spoken by Yakou. His team was all prepared to bleed for Usogui and his dream (and many of them have suffered serious injuries or death), and Baku was prepared to bleed to pay the price as well. Fukurou and Lalo were not prepared to bleed for each other, and in a way, everyone in Ideal was prepared to sacrifice for their own goals, but not necessarily Lalo's.

Fukurou really didn't do anything wrong. He completed his duties perfectly, making the best hands each round outside of the flub in Round 4, and had very little information other than what be could deduce on his own. But elder Nowa does mention that he made a mistake. How the author wants us to interpret this is a bit unclear at the moment, but its not a big obvious mistake like making a bad hand. Fukurou seems to believe so as well; when the pain moved in to punish him on the final round, Fukurou seems to be expecting it and resigned to whatever fate he will endure. I think he understood that there must have been a deeper meaning to Hal's invalid hand, but could not figure it out. Perhaps Fukurou and Lalo could have sniffed out the situation by getting to see that Hal made a "mistake" and Lalo's 1 bios scan, but ultimately Usogui and Hal's teamwork was far superior and the cracked regulator mindgame was too much. Lalo didn't think hard enough about why Usogui played 26 before 25.

Count me among those that think it'd be fitting for the final pain to be drowning. Didn't even consider that, I figured it'd be beheading or crushed or something.
 
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This is pure perfection.

Wonder which situation brings out the best amongst geniuses: competition or cooperation?

The last match is coming up.
 
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Hal knew the remaining number after counting the total of the numbers used to deduce that usogui had 25, since they both had a half and then all his numbers would add up to give 25 for the last card.
It can be done since Baku sort of did it here
https://mangadex.org/chapter/856680/4
I thought this too, but I realized that Baku's cards don't actually add up to 182, which is half of the sum of all cards in a poker deck. The main reason being that the cards only account for 50 out of 52 cards, so there could be a difference between 2 to 26 (for the two unplayed cards). So Hal couldn't actually deduce what the last card is.

Rather, I think Hal simply saved cards for the last hand so that he could have the best options for the 5th round, because of how well he knew Baku's personality and gambling style.
 

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