IE777: The Brother He Had to Defeat

1. IE777: His Brother Sat on the Other Side

Faiz knew the sound of Sameer's thumb against a pack of cards. Two light taps, a pause, one more tap. He had heard it in their childhood home, at family gatherings and during the years when his older brother taught him Indian rummy after dinner.

Now he heard it across the final table and wanted to stand up.

Sameer was forty. Faiz was thirty-four. For nineteen months they had spoken only when somebody else was present. Their mother had stopped asking them to visit on the same Sunday.

On the table between them lay the rules for a six-deal match. Each valid declaration gave its maker zero penalty points; the other player received the value of unmatched cards under the published rules. Lowest total after six deals won that table. Three independent tables would decide the team final, with one match point for each table won.

There would be no conversation between teammates during play.

Faiz's captain, Divya, had asked him one question before they entered the hall.

“If your brother needs you to make a mistake, what will you do?”

“He won't ask.”

“That wasn't my question.”

Faiz looked at the woman who had given him a place when other teams avoided him.

“I'll play the hand.”

Across from him, Sameer stopped tapping. The umpire asked both players whether they were ready. Faiz said yes before his brother could answer for him.

2. The Empty Chair at the Old Final

Nineteen months earlier, Faiz had missed a team final because the relief operator at his water treatment plant had not arrived. An equipment alarm had made it impossible for the short-staffed shift to leave without handing over safely. Faiz sent messages, called twice and remained at work until a supervisor took charge.

By then the team had used its registered reserve and lost.

Sameer was captain. In the hall he said his brother had abandoned them because he was frightened of the opposing player. Somebody recorded the sentence. By night, people who had never met Faiz were forwarding it.

Faiz brought the shift record the following morning. Sameer looked at it and said, “Then you should never have promised to come.”

The team manager later checked the messages and corrected the account. Sameer did not.

At their mother's birthday, he moved Faiz's old team jacket from a chair and placed it beside the shoes. He said he needed the chair for players who turned up.

Faiz left before the cake was cut. His mother followed him to the staircase carrying a paper plate. He could not take it without crying, so he pretended he was late for a bus.

He stopped attending the old practice room. For months the only cards he touched were the worn pack in his kitchen. Sometimes he dealt a hand, stared at it and put every card away without making a move.

3. The Work Divya Refused to Do for Him

Divya did not invite Faiz to her team out of pity. She watched him in an open practice event and saw a player who recognised useful combinations but became reckless after losing.

He tried to win back an entire evening in the next hand.

She offered him a trial, with a condition: every review had to begin with the earliest avoidable mistake, not the dramatic last discard.

They placed thirteen cards on the table and gave him three minutes to explain two different plans. A completed pure sequence had to remain distinguishable from a sequence using a joker. A set needed the same rank in different suits. He was not allowed to describe an incomplete group as “almost safe” and forget its unmatched value.

One exercise paired 5 of clubs and 6 of clubs with several isolated high cards. Faiz kept a king because throwing it away felt like admitting defeat. Divya asked what actual legal group it could join in the visible hand.

He had no good answer.

They replayed the choice with several possible draws. Sometimes the king became useful. More often the connected low cards offered more ways to improve. The lesson was conditional, never a promise about the next card.

After work he practised with Bhuwan, the team's third player. Bhuwan was slower, less stylish and merciless about counting. On the first evening he found three points Faiz had missed. On the next, Faiz checked before being asked.

4. Sameer's Preparation

Sameer heard that Faiz had qualified for Divya's team and felt an anger he could not justify. He had wanted his brother to return to serious play. Apparently he had wanted him to ask permission first.

His own practice partner, Neeraj, refused to discuss the family quarrel during reviews.

“You said he wasn't dependable. That is your argument. These cards are a different one.”

Sameer prepared properly. He practised breaking unhelpful pairs early, protecting a valid pure run and assessing when a joker belonged in a sequence rather than a set. He was an experienced player, not a loud man waiting to be exposed by one lucky draw.

In a qualifying round he reduced a bad hand to a small penalty and won the table by eleven points. In another, he made a legal declaration before his opponent had secured the required sequences.

He earned his place in the final.

When the draw put him opposite Faiz, Neeraj said, “Good. Now you can stop telling stories about how he plays.”

Sameer almost objected. Instead he checked the six-deal format again.

That evening he opened an old message from the treatment plant supervisor. It stated clearly why Faiz could not leave. Sameer had read it months before. He had never answered it.

He typed a reply, deleted it and laid out a practice hand. For once, sorting the cards did not quiet the other thing he needed to do.

5. Forty-Eight Points

The first deal punished Faiz immediately. He had an early pure sequence, but the rest of his hand developed badly. A pair he expected to turn into a set remained a pair. He kept two high cards too long while trying to complete a second sequence.

Sameer declared legally. Faiz's unmatched cards totalled forty-eight.

The scorer wrote 48 beside his name and 0 beside Sameer's.

Faiz heard the remembered sentence from the old hall: frightened of the opposing player. His hand moved towards the cards before the umpire had finished checking them.

He stopped. The review was not an insult. It was part of the game.

On the second deal, he secured his pure sequence first, kept two useful connected groups and discarded an isolated honour when it offered no sensible place in the hand. A later draw completed the second run. He checked all thirteen cards before declaring.

Sameer received thirty-four points.

The totals stood at Faiz 48, Sameer 34.

Nothing had been repaired between them. Sameer had not smiled. Faiz had not looked at the audience. They had each won one deal, and Faiz still trailed.

At the other tables, Divya and Bhuwan were fighting their own opponents. Faiz could see neither set of cards. He forced his attention back to his own place, where the next deal could make his position better or worse without caring about the history attached to his surname.

6. Ten Points Nobody Applauded

The third deal belonged to Sameer. Faiz recognised that his opponent's exposed choices suggested a useful developing hand, but he could not know its exact contents. A pick from the discard pile was evidence of a need, not a window into thirteen cards.

Faiz concentrated on what he could control.

He completed two sequences, including a pure one, and reduced the unmatched portion of his hand. When Sameer declared, the penalty was ten.

Faiz 58. Sameer 34.

A spectator behind the barrier whispered that Faiz had lost again. He had. The ten points still mattered.

Sameer understood that better than the spectator. He had hoped to catch his brother holding several isolated high cards. Instead, the hand exposed for counting showed a player who had changed his plan before the position became desperate.

In the fourth deal, Faiz received a joker and initially placed it beside a pair. He did not treat that arrangement as permanent. A natural card later completed the set, freeing the joker for a different legal group. He verified that one sequence remained entirely natural.

His declaration left Sameer with thirty-two points.

Faiz 58. Sameer 66.

The lead had changed hands.

Sameer nodded at the score sheet. It was a small movement, almost invisible. Faiz saw it and remembered his brother making the same gesture when he first learned to stop confusing three cards of one suit with an actual consecutive sequence.

7. A Break Without Permission

The scheduled break came after four deals. Players could leave the playing area, but no hand was in progress. Faiz went to the water station. Sameer followed and stood far enough away to make the distance obvious.

“I read the shift record again,” Sameer said.

Faiz looked at the paper cup in his hand.

“You read it before.”

“Yes.”

“Then don't use today to discover it.”

Sameer did not defend himself. For several seconds the noise from the hall filled the space between them.

“I won't,” he said.

Faiz returned first. Divya passed him on her way out. She did not ask about his cards or offer advice. She asked whether he was all right to continue.

He said he was.

The fifth deal went badly enough to test the answer. A promising start narrowed into awkward choices. Sameer kept improving while Faiz had to separate a tempting but incomplete group and lower the value he was carrying.

Sameer declared. Sixteen points were added to Faiz's total.

Faiz 74. Sameer 66. One deal remained.

Bhuwan's table had already finished with a loss. Divya's match was still alive. Faiz's team now needed both remaining tables.

Sameer knew it too. He checked the scoring line and squared the cards. Whatever apology he owed outside the hall, he would not insult his brother by giving him an easy hand inside it.

8. Thirteen Cards Between Them

Faiz's final hand did not arrive complete. He built it through several ordinary decisions, abandoning an early plan when the cards no longer supported it.

Late in the deal, he had a pure heart sequence: 2, 3, 4 and 5. He held 8 and 9 of clubs; three sevens in diamonds, clubs and spades; and jack, queen and king of spades. The remaining card was the king of diamonds.

Thirteen cards, one unfinished group.

A 10 of clubs would complete the club run. Other changes could create different routes, but he could not order the draw pile to supply one. He also could not declare the existing collection as a finished hand merely because every group looked close.

Sameer discarded a card Faiz did not need. Faiz left it and drew from the closed pile.

The card was the 10 of clubs.

His first response was not triumph. It was a count.

Four hearts in sequence. Three clubs in sequence. Three sevens of different suits. Three consecutive spades. Thirteen cards after the king of diamonds was discarded. All groups legal; the required sequences present, with natural sequences available.

He declared.

The umpire examined the hand while Faiz kept both palms on the edge of the table. Sameer arranged his own cards for counting. He did not search for a technical objection that did not exist. He looked once at the completed clubs, then placed his unmatched cards apart.

9. The Other Table Still Had to Win

Sameer's penalty was twenty-four. The final totals were Faiz 74 and Sameer 90.

Faiz had won their table by sixteen points. The ten-point loss in the third deal had been part of the result just as surely as the last declaration.

Sameer signed the score sheet first.

There was no team victory yet. Bhuwan had lost, Faiz had won, and Divya was still playing. The brothers stood behind the spectator barrier, where neither could speak to the players or influence the remaining hand.

Divya's opponent was good. Twice he refused a discard that looked attractive from the outside. Divya waited through both decisions, reshaped her hand and eventually completed a valid declaration. Her final aggregate put her ahead at the table.

Two tables to one. Faiz's team had won.

Bhuwan came towards him looking embarrassed about his own loss. Faiz caught his arm before he could apologise.

“You counted every practice hand with me. Come here.”

A man beside Sameer muttered that brothers should never have been placed against each other. The implication was clear enough.

Faiz turned before Sameer could answer.

“He beat me in three deals. I beat him in three. Look at the six sheets if you want to understand the difference.”

The scorer laid them out for the official record. Every penalty had been checked in public. Sameer had played to win. Faiz would not let somebody use his own victory to invent a new lie about his brother.

10. The Game They Replayed Afterward

The trophy photograph included Divya, Faiz and Bhuwan. Sameer stayed outside it. He belonged to the other team, whose disappointment deserved his attention too.

He congratulated his teammates on their work before approaching Faiz.

“I knew why you missed that final,” he said. “I called you frightened because I was angry and wanted the loss to belong to somebody else.”

Faiz did not make the answer easy.

“You let our mother hear that.”

“I know. I'll tell her what I just told you.”

“Tell the people who heard it in the hall.”

Sameer did. The correction was plain and specific. There was no claim that the new match had proved what the shift record had already established. Faiz had been wronged before he won anything.

Later, the brothers sat at an empty practice table. They did not replay the glorious final declaration. Sameer asked to see the third deal, the one Faiz had lost for ten points.

Faiz laid out the remembered position and explained the earlier decision to release a high card. Sameer suggested an alternative. Faiz showed why it left too much unmatched value if the next draw failed.

They argued for twelve minutes.

When Divya came to collect the team, Faiz packed his cards and stood immediately. He would leave with the people he had entered with.

Sameer touched the table twice, paused, then tapped once more.

“Sunday?” he asked.

“After practice,” Faiz said.