THE ALMANAC

Sit Down, Charlie

Sit down, Charlie. Have the cheesecake; it's the only honest thing on Broadway. You've learned the rules, which puts you level with every sucker in this city. The rules tell you what you're allowed to do; I'm going to tell you what pays. I've made my living on the difference.

1.Count your Plays before you count your money.

Plays today  =  Influence  −  staked  −  Heat,  up to five.

That's the whole racket in one line. Every marker you own is doing one of three things: sitting on a Job, cooling on the Heat Track, or working in your Ledger. Only the working ones buy you anything today, and the Ledger stops at five. So the markers above your fifth don't buy extra Plays. What they buy is room: room to stake a Job, room to make some noise, and still wake up with five in the drawer. Every lesson after this one is a fight over one of those three terms.

2.Your token's a trade, not a rank.

Suckers think Turn Token #1 is the best seat. It's a seat. The low token drafts first at the Brew and moves first in the Hustle. The high token picks first at the Offers, and at the Brew it picks from the last two dice, so it decides what gets left on the table to blow. Dice or cards: you're choosing between them every time you decide whether to make one more Play or Lay Low.

So late in the day, holding a marker or two and nothing to spend them on, remember what you're bidding for. It isn't money. A marker pays you $100 whether you Collect with it or cash it when you Lay Low, so the cash is a wash. It's position. Collect is how you hold your seat without showing anybody a thing.

I · The Stills

Every sucker in this city thinks the dice decide who eats. I've spent my whole life around dice, Charlie. They decide a lot less than people think.

3.Cook sevens.

If you remember one thing I tell you tonight, make it this. The Harbormaster names tomorrow's Mash, and a mean one can leave your boilers stone cold: let him name a 1, and no Red die in the world makes an 8. But a 7? Whatever face he names, 1 through 6, some Red makes seven. Nobody can starve a 7.

And sevens are the only number worth stacking. Count the boilers: four 7s in the city, three 4s, three 8s, a pair of everything else, and one lonely 12 up in East Harlem. A wall of 9s is two kettles and a light switch. The catch is that the cops start the game sitting on all four 7s, one to a Borough, and each one opens when a Raid moves its Squad along. Be standing next door when yours does. And crew each Still with five men and stop there: the sixth brews nothing the fifth didn't.

4.Can't get sevens? Bracket the ends.

Hold one low boiler and one high one, like a 3 and a 9. The face that starves the 3 is the face that feeds the 9, and the other way round. He can squeeze one or the other, never both. You'll never pour like a fat stack, but you'll pour something every morning, and when a hostile Harbormaster is starving the table, something is a fortune.

The one bracket in town whose ends touch is Red Hook's 6 and The Bowery's 9. The Brooklyn Bridge joins them, so a Boss on one can Split the Batch into the other, and you hold a bar to sell at and a Dock to Trade at besides.

5.Read the Harbormaster's boilers.

The man who names the Mash cooks from the same pot you do. If his Stills are 8s and 9s, he'll name a middling face or a high one, because a low one leaves his own boilers cold. His turf tells you tomorrow's number a full day early.

Better yet, build on his numbers. Whatever face lights his boilers lights yours. He can only starve you by starving himself, and a man who brews won't.

Which Mash faces keep a boiler alive (lessons 3 to 5)

Boiler	Mash faces that can fire it	Faces	Can the Harbormaster starve it?
2	1	1 of 6	Yes: any face but 1
3	1–2	2 of 6	Yes: 3 or higher
4	1–3	3 of 6	Yes: 4 or higher
5	1–4	4 of 6	Yes: 5 or 6
6	1–5	5 of 6	Yes: 6
7	1–6	6 of 6	Never
8	2–6	5 of 6	Yes: 1
9	3–6	4 of 6	Yes: 1 or 2
10	4–6	3 of 6	Yes: 3 or lower
11	5–6	2 of 6	Yes: 4 or lower
12	6	1 of 6	Yes: any face but 6

6.Then Lay Low ahead of him.

When he clumps on one number, the Mash he names leaves exactly one face on the dice that fires it. So mirror his Stills, then Lay Low before he does, so you draft ahead of him tomorrow. Pick first and you fire whenever that face shows anywhere in the pool: about three mornings in five. Pick behind him and it has to show twice: one morning in five, at best. He built the shortage. You walk off with the only key.

It isn't free. An early Lay Low leaves Plays on the table and sends you late to the Offers. Against a man clumped on one number, pay it.

7.Park the Boss beside a cold boiler.

Your Boss is worth a second Still every morning his own one fires: Split the Batch lets you fire one more Still you Control next door, whatever its number. So stand him on a boiler that fires often, beside a fat one that doesn't. Sugar Hill's 7 sits across the avenue from East Harlem's 12, the loneliest boiler in town. Hold both, and that 12 fires every time the 7 does. No two 7s touch, mind, so a wall of sevens never Splits a barrel.

Just remember his number is his payday and his funeral: the Blowback comes off the same dice. He walks one block a Play like anybody else, so move him the night before, not the morning of.

8.Your seat only matters when your number shows twice.

Amateurs sweat the Blowback every morning. Don't. The Red you take leaves the pool with you, so if the face you need showed up once, nothing left on the table can burn that boiler. The danger is a double: two of your face, you take one, and some sweetheart leaves the other lying there as the Blowback. That's the morning to worry, and the morning the last seat matters, because he picks from the final two dice and decides which one stays.

II · The Offers

The Jobs Market is where Respect is for sale. Suckers treat it like a shop. It's a queue, and you pay rent to stand in it.

9.The stake is rent. Claim the morning you can finish it.

A Job you've claimed sits on your markers until you pull it off, and the Offers come before you fund your Ledger. So a marker on a card is a marker that isn't working, every day you hold it. At 6 Influence, a 5-Respect Job costs you two Plays a day. Claim it three days early and you've paid six Plays for a promise.

Nothing on the street expires, and every Job in the deck is done in a single Play. So build the position first, quietly, then claim the card on the morning you can do the deed that afternoon. One day of rent, full Respect. Claim early only to deny somebody, or when you can see a rival reaching for the same card.

The cheapest rent is a 1, and on a quiet day you won't feel it: at 6 Influence, with nothing cooling on the Heat Track, a Stake of 1 still leaves you five Plays. Make some noise and it bites like any other. Half the 1s in the deck ask for what your liquor does anyway: haul some barrels, sell some, make a Trade. Eat them early. The cheap ones leave the deck first, and the man who sniffs at 1s on Day 3 is shopping in a market full of wars on Day 12.

10.Bribe early; it's a Jobs play.

Most men think Bribes are for the end, when you're buying your way to the table. Take it from a man who's bought a few judges: wrong. Your 7th marker makes a 3-Respect Job free to hold, and your 8th makes a 5 free. They're the cheapest rungs on the ladder, $2,000 and $3,000, and they do the most work. The 9th and 10th are headroom for the noise you'll make, and the 10th is the Nod: the whole city vouching for you, and the only key to the crown. Every man who's crowned climbs all four rungs, so buy the cheap ones while they still work for you, and save the last for the day your Boss is already standing in the room (lesson 28). Keep the old man on the board while you climb: he makes every drop in person.

11.Your board talks; your cards don't.

Your Jobs are face-up and so is your stake. The one secret you've got is what you mean to do next, and it leaks through the board: barrels drifting toward one Speakeasy, a Safehouse creeping out of your Borough, men gathering two blocks from a Dock. A rival who reads turf sees your claim coming a day early and takes the card first. So assemble late and fast. Six barrels arriving in one Move on the morning you claim is a done deal; six arriving over four days is an announcement.

And a claim can lie for you. Take a card that points at Manhattan and watch the Manhattan boss thicken his garrison while your real business happens somewhere else. You pay rent on the feint, but you're buying three men looking the wrong way.

Read the street the same way. Every Borough has a 5 with its name on it, a bounty on its Boss, its Safehouse or its men. When yours turns up, move whatever it's hunting.

12.Only deny a card that would crown somebody.

You can take any card on the street, including one you never mean to do, just to keep it out of a rival's hands. It works, and it's dear: the morning you take it, a second morning to walk away from it, and rent every day in between. Save it for the card that would carry a man to 10 with the Nod in hand or one Bribe away. Then it's cheap at any price, because there's no tomorrow left to save for.

13.Pour Rum at High Society late, and in batches.

Here's the one way to get more than five Plays in a day. Every barrel of Havana Rum you Unload at a High Society Venue you Control moves a marker from your Reserves back into an empty Ledger slot. Three barrels pay for the Unload and buy you a Play, and three is too few for the Greed Tax to hear. Five is the ceiling.

There are two ways to waste it. Pour early, with your Ledger full, and there's no empty slot for the Kickback to land in, so pour on your last markers. And don't make the run every day: Moonshine to the Dock, Trade, Rum to the room costs Plays before it pays any back. A daily run of four barrels loses you Plays. Stockpile ten, make the trip once, pour it in two Unloads, and you net about three, for two Heat markers. Just remember a stockpile is exactly what the cops come looking for.

III · The Gun

Every fight is a bet, Charlie, and most men place it without looking at the odds. Guns don't win this town; Respect does. But turf never comes quietly, so learn which fights pay.

14.Never walk into even numbers, and never grind.

Defense is strong in this city. Take a block held by a Boss, three Runners and a Safehouse. Bring your own Boss and three men, even numbers, and you take it about one try in seventy. Bring double and it's a coin flip. Bring triple and it's yours nearly nine times in ten, and you'll still bury four or five men getting in the door.

Every volley costs a marker, too. Plan to win in two or three. If the door isn't breaking, Fall Back. A fourth volley buys you about eight points of odds, costs a Play you could have spent anywhere else, and kills your own Boss one time in six more. Bring the old man to a fortress short-handed and he's usually one of the men you bury.

Storming a fortress: Boss and 3 Runners behind a Safehouse, up to 3 volleys

You bring	You take it	Men you lose	Your Boss dies
Boss + 3 Runners (even numbers)	1.5%	3.9	91%
Boss + 4	8%	4.5	68%
Boss + 5	23%	4.8	36%
Boss + 6 (double)	49%	4.6	8%
Boss + 9 (triple)	88%	4.1	0%

15.A picket is a toll, not a wall.

The fortress is the exception: nobody has the men to build more than one. Every other block your rival holds is watched by one man, two, three, or nobody, and a picket of two won't stop anybody who brought five. What it does is send the bill. An empty corner costs you one Move. Two men cost you the Move, two or three volleys and, if he Holds Fire, the Heat.

So pay the toll once, and bring enough to be sure. Against two men, your Boss and three take it better than eight times in ten. A third man is a second die, and a second die is an Ambush worth firing, so against three you want the Boss and five. And count to five: five bodies roll three dice, where the sixth only stands in front of them.

Take the old man, but never short-handed. Your men die before he does, so with one Runner more than the picket has men, he's dead about one time in twenty. Walk him in with one Runner against two, and it's nearly one in two.

Picking off a picket, no Boss or Safehouse defending, up to 3 volleys

You bring	Against	He can Ambush	He's spent out	Men you lose
5 Runners	2 Runners	72%	81%	1.3 → 0.7
Boss + 3	2 Runners	84%	88%	1.2 → 0.7
Boss + 4	2 Runners	92%	96%	1.1 → 0.5
3 Runners	3 Runners	6%	18%	2.3 → 1.5
8 Runners	3 Runners	72%	80%	2.2 → 1.2
Boss + 4	3 Runners	60%	82%	2.3 → 1.2
Boss + 5	3 Runners	78%	88%	2.2 → 1.1

16.Shoot the sitting duck.

A man with no marker in his Ledger can't Ambush, and neither can a man who's Laid Low. On the street he's a sitting duck, and since every Ledger sits on the table, everybody knows it. Catch a picket that way and you take it more often, and you bury about half the men doing it. The price is that you fire first, so the Heat is yours.

The duck that matters has three men. Two men are a duck all day, spent or not, because no sensible man fires one die. Three men with a marker will Ambush, and it costs you: your Boss and four take them six times in ten through the Ambush, eight in ten when the Ledger's dry, and you bury one man instead of two. So when three men are left minding something worth owning at dusk and the Ledger behind them is empty, that's your afternoon.

17.Armies that don't march.

Fifteen Runners can't be everywhere, but your Safehouse can go anywhere Safe, and it's the only place you Recruit. So don't march an army to the border. Secure the Safehouse one step from the target, $500 and a Play, then Recruit right there at $300 a man. The garrison next door wakes up to five strangers who never crossed a street. Do it late in the day: between the Secure and the Recruit that house stands empty, and any rival next door with a marker left can walk in and take it.

18.Fold, check or raise.

When a man walks onto your block you've got three answers, same as poker, and I know poker. Fold if the corner's scrap: you keep every man, and men are harder to replace than turf. Hold Fire is the check. He has to shoot first to find out what you've got, he pays for every volley, and he takes the Heat for opening, while you shoot back for free. Ambush is the raise, and raises are for made hands. Three men roll two dice, and their Ambush swings a fight twenty points. Two men roll one, and theirs kills half a man and moves a Boss-led raid four points, for your marker on the Track. Weak hands check or fold. Strong hands raise.

19.Fold what you'd lose anyway.

Men hate to fold a block with barrels on it. It feels like handing him the money. But look at what happens when you stand and lose: he takes the block, and the barrels, and your men besides. The pile goes either way. All that standing buys is your chance to hold, so price it like a bet. Take the men you'll bury, at $300 a head to hire again, and divide by your chance to hold. A pile worth less than that, you fold.

You'll fold more than you think. Two men facing a Boss and three hold one time in eight and bury two doing it: stand only for $4,700, sixteen barrels of swill. Three men with a marker to raise hold nearly two times in five against a Boss and four, and six barrels make that stand worth it.

Two things beat the arithmetic. At four Heat, check and let him have the pile: he fires the fifth marker and he's standing on your barrels when the sirens come. And read his Jobs before you answer. A Fold hands him a Seize as surely as losing does, so a block his Job names is worth more than its barrels. But a man on a Kill Job is paid in your dead, not your turf, and a Fold pays him nothing.

Fold or stand: a picket with barrels on the block, up to 3 volleys, a dead man at $300

You hold	He brings	You hold it (Hold Fire / Ambush)	Men you lose	Stand only for a pile over
2 Runners	3 Runners	45% / 61%	1.4 / 1.2	$900 / $600
2 Runners	5 Runners	20% / 28%	1.8 / 1.7	$2,700 / $1,800
2 Runners	Boss + 3	12% / 16%	1.9 / 1.8	$4,700 / $3,500
3 Runners	5 Runners	51% / 69%	2.2 / 1.8	$1,300 / $800
3 Runners	Boss + 4	18% / 39%	2.8 / 2.4	$4,600 / $1,800

20.Know your family's edge.

The Irish bring an extra die to every Open Fire, worth about a whole tier of men: a Boss and four Runners storming a Boss, three Runners and a Safehouse goes from about 8% to about 33%. It never fires on defense, so the Irish win by going through doors. Peddle sells swill in your own Wards for half the Influence an Unload costs.

The Sicilians don't take the turf; they take the man. A Hit into a rival's full garrison kills his Boss about two times in three, and a Bossless rival can't Bribe, can't Split the Batch and can't be crowned until he Rises and walks back into High Society. It's the one gun at this table that reliably reaches a Boss dug into a room. Untouchable keeps the cops off your Safehouse block, and Consigliere takes a marker off the Heat Track. Anybody's marker, which re-aims the next Raid.

The Vipers take away the Ambush and the Fold. Against a thin block that's everything: five men on a Stealth take a Boss, two Runners and a Safehouse three times in four, where the front door takes it one time in four. Never lay siege with it. Tunnel empties the till before the fight, and Whispers tells you which Job the Market deals next while nobody else can read it.

The Knights don't add dice; they add reach. Skiff lands five men on any coast from any coast you Control. Network puts a free Rum on every Trade, and Torch burns a Safehouse outright for 1 Influence and a Runner.

IV · The Law

Most men treat the cops like weather. I've paid enough of them to know better: the law is a machine, with a trigger, a way of picking a door, and a refund. Learn to read it and you can aim it.

21.The law counts Plays, not corpses.

Only four things put a marker on the Heat Track: the first shot of a firefight, Extort, Torch, and selling four or more barrels in one Play. One firefight is one marker however many men fall. Extort is one marker whether three blocks pay or eleven. Three barrels at a time is silent forever. So when you have to be loud, be loud in bulk. And the quiet answers cost nothing: Hold Fire and Fold never draw Heat.

22.The law chases the freshest name.

When the sirens come, each Squad goes after the mob whose marker sits furthest right on the Track: the most recent noise, not the most noise. Three markers deep but quiet since Tuesday? They'll walk right past you to the fellow who shouted this morning. So be loud early in the cycle, right after a Raid, and let the others shout over you. Every marker that lands after yours is armor.

23.Build the bust yourself.

A Squad only looks at the Districts right beside it, inside its own Borough, and Staten Island has none. Hold nothing next to a Squad and you can be the loudest crew in town and never see a badge.

You can't always stop the knock, but you can pick the door. The Squad kicks in whichever of your blocks in its reach holds the most barrels. So when you know your name will be freshest, make the fattest target a corner you can afford to lose. Pile cheap Moonshine there, keep your Safehouse and your Boss somewhere else, and let them come. They take the swill, padlock a corner you'd written off, and walk straight past the empire.

Now turn it around. A raided crew runs on foot to a Safe block next door, and if there isn't one, the whole crew is arrested. A Dock with one land exit is a cell with a view. Put a man across a rival's only way out before the sirens, and the Raid you both saw coming stops being a fine and becomes a clean sweep. And mind your own exits: Squads move one at a time in Borough order, so a crew scattering from the first can land in the path of the second.

24.At four Heat, let him fire the fifth.

When the Track sits at four, every loud Play is a finger on the trigger. So if a man walks onto your block, Hold Fire. If he wants it, he has to shoot first, and his first shot is the fifth marker with his name on it. Heat lands when his Play ends, so he gets to finish the fight, and then the sirens come for the freshest name on the Track: his.

Now leave a stack of barrels on that block, inside a Squad's reach. He knows before he pulls the trigger that whatever he wins, he'll be standing on the fattest door in the precinct when the cops arrive. That's a garrison that never fires a shot. The other side of the coin: at four, never fire first into a quiet block yourself. The man who checked to you may be holding the door open between you and the sirens.

25.Sometimes you want the sirens.

A Raid isn't only trouble. When it's over, every Heat marker at the table goes home, and whoever had the most cooling gets the most back. Every Squad that moves unlocks the block it was standing on, and early in the game that's a High Society room and its 7. So at four markers, the man with a clean position and a reason to want sirens should be racing to pull the trigger.

Can't wait? Drop a dime. The Rat starts a Raid right now, at any height, and puts no marker on the Track, so the law hunts whoever made the last noise, not you. You take the Rat Card: −2 Respect, but it only counts when you reach for the crown. Far from it, that's nearly free, and The Insurance Job pays 3 Respect for a Rat that padlocks one of your own weak Stills. Close to it, two points is a fifth of the road.

V · The Table

Everything else I told you, you can count. This part you have to play. There are no shared victories in this city, Charlie. There are only bills, and better company to split them with.

26.Promise only what you alone control.

A broken Handshake costs you a point of Respect forever, and it counts however it breaks, even if somebody else broke it for you. So word every deal as something you do, never as something that happens. "I won't cross the river today" can't be sabotaged. "You'll cross my Borough unharmed" can be ruined by any third crew with one Move, and you're the one wearing the Welsher card.

Same rule, other end. The moment two rivals shake, breaking their deal is one of your Plays. Block the road he promised was clear; shoot the man he promised to protect. One Move from you, and a rival is a point short for good.

27.Count a man's distance from the crown before you count on his word.

Respect is public, and so is the Nod, so the price of a promise is on the table for anyone to read. A man one point from the crown will die before he breaks his word. A man one Play from it owes you nothing. The game ends the moment he takes it, and every promise due at Sunset dies with it, so when he holds the Nod and his Boss is in the room, take your money up front. A man far back, or already wearing the Rat's −2, is selling paper the street has already discounted. And count the Welsher cards in his pile: a serial breaker's word isn't collateral, it's confetti.

28.Walk in first; buy the Nod last.

I told you to Bribe early. All but the last one. Every man at this table can count to ten, and the day you hold the Nod, three bosses stop fighting each other and start hunting your Boss. He's never cheaper than on the walk: with a man or two around him in the open, a Boss and six that reach him finish him eight times in ten. So turn the order round. Walk him into the room while you're still a Bribe short, dig him in, and buy the tenth judge last. Then the Nod and the crown are two Plays on one afternoon, and the table gets one turn to answer.

• Give the walk a reason. At eight Influence and a quiet Track, a 5 costs you no Plays to hold, and every Borough has one that marches an army in: a Boss to kill in Queens, a Safehouse to burn in Manhattan, a five-man block in the Bronx, five bodies in Brooklyn. Let them guard what the card is hunting while the old man turns into the room. If the Job comes off too, so much the better.
• Dig him in. Four men and your Safehouse around him, and a marker kept back for the Ambush, and a Boss and six get to him one time in fourteen. A Sicilian Hit gets to him four times in five, so know where the Sicilians are.
• Come in clean and quiet. Square Up with Shylock the week before: a Mark on the last day costs a Play, $2,000 and your secret. Keep your name off the Heat Track, because a Squad never comes for a man with no marker there, whoever drops the dime. And promise nothing a third man can break: at ten Respect, one Welsher drops you to nine.
• Be the last man up. Once the others have Laid Low they get no more turns, and the Nod and the crown are only four markers.

29.Watch his Boss, not his Nod.

The crown goes to a man, not a number: he takes it with his Boss standing in a High Society room, and the taking is a Play of its own, so you always see it one turn out. One turn is rarely enough. A man who knows his business buys the Nod last, with the old man already dug in, and a Boss behind four men and a Safehouse shrugs off a Boss and six thirteen times in fourteen. Only a Sicilian Hit gets through as a rule. So don't wait for the Nod. Watch the man a Bribe short of it, with $5,000 on the table, clean books and ten Respect, whose Boss is on the move toward a room, and kill him on the walk. The whole table has one target, and nobody hits it alone. Split the bill, each of you doing the cheap piece.

• Put out a hit. Post a cash bounty on his Boss. Cash crosses the table freely, and it's how the rest of you hire the Sicilians. A dead Boss Rises in a Safe Ward, and the Rise, the walk and the crown cost him five markers at least. Shut the Wards too: a Runner of yours in each Ward he doesn't hold is a door he can't come home through.
• Stand in his road. Sit in the room nearest him and he has to walk to the next. If he crosses your block, don't check: Hold Fire and he pays one more marker and Advances straight through. Ambush him. Alone, he dies half the time to two men and three times in four to three.
• Count his Rum, not his markers. Rum under the bar of his own room is a second Ledger at dusk. Take the room or bust the stockpile before the rest of you go home, because the last man up crowns without a word from anybody.
• Rat him out of the room. If his name is freshest on the Track and the room is his fattest door in a Squad's reach, one phone call scatters him out and padlocks it behind him. A Sicilian with his Safehouse in the room is the one man it can't touch.
• Leave his number in the pool. A Blowback on his room won't kill a Boss with a man beside him, but it takes his guards, Runners first. A Boss and four wake up as a Boss and one, and your Boss and four finish that nearly nine times in ten before dinner.

One turn to stop the crown: his Boss dies to one rival's Play, up to 3 volleys, he Ambushes

His Boss has	A Boss and six Runners	A Sicilian Hit (Boss and six)
Nobody	100%	99%
One Runner	98%	95%
Two Runners	83%	89%
Four Runners	18%	84%
Four Runners and a Safehouse	7%	80%

30.In the Blood Oath, the wedding is a move.

In the team game every Raid moves the Federal Crackdown Tracker, and at space 10 the table freezes, ranks by Respect, and marries 1st to 4th and 2nd to 3rd, for good. Play toward that moment. Your rank picks your partner, and you can move it: a man at the bottom who Rats drags the wedding forward while he's still cheap enough to marry the leader. And look hard at the debts you're marrying. No Alliance is crowned while either partner holds a Mark, so his Mark is your padlock until he's clean. At $2,000 a Mark, and with cash free to cross the table, that's a bill you can pay for him.

Before You Go

Three questions, before every Play. Which clock does it move? The cheap Respect draining out of the deck, the climb from six Influence to ten, or the slow boil of the Heat Track. What does it tell the table? Your Jobs, your stake, your cash, your barrels and your Heat are all out in the open; what you mean to do next is the only secret you own, and most Plays spend a little of it. Who hears it? Every noise has a bill with a name on it. Make sure it's the right name, even when it isn't yours.

New York doesn't crown the man with the best dice, the best cards or the best guns, Charlie. It crowns the one who works out first that they were all the same money.

The phone rings at the counter. He listens, hangs up, and reaches for his coat. "McManus wants to see me at the Park Central," he says. "Finish your cheesecake, Charlie."

Arnold Rothstein was shot at the Park Central Hotel that night. The war for what he left behind is where Moonshine Kingdom begins.

The Figures

The numbers behind the advice, for the kind of man who checks. Be that kind of man, Charlie. Everything on this page is straight arithmetic off the rules and the board. The combat odds sit beside the lessons they back, in Chapter III.

Every boiler in the city, by number (lessons 3, 4 and 7)

Boiler	How many	Where
7	4	Sugar Hill, Morris Park, Richmond Hill, Williamsburg (no two touch)
4	3	Corona, Canarsie, Tottenville
8	3	The Tenderloin, Fordham, Stapleton
2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11	2 each	A pair, and no more
12	1	East Harlem, alone

Plays a day, with a clean Heat Track (lessons 1, 9 and 10)

Your Influence	No Job	Stake 1 (a 1)	Stake 2 (a 3)	Stake 3 (a 5)	Stake 5 (a 5 and a 3)
6, where everyone starts	5	5	4	3	1
7	5	5	5	4	2
8	5	5	5	5	3
9	5	5	5	5	4
10, the Nod	5	5	5	5	5

Every marker cooling on the Heat Track slides you down one row.

Pouring Rum at a High Society Venue, with empty Ledger slots to fill (lesson 13)

You Unload	Costs	Kickbacks	Net Plays	The catch
2 Rum	2	2	0	The sale pays for itself.
3 Rum	2	3	+1	No Heat. The clean shipment.
4 Rum	2	4	+2	The Greed Tax draws one Heat.
5 Rum	2	5	+3	The ceiling: five slots to fill.
6 or more	2	5	+3	More cash, no more Plays.

Combat odds in Chapters III and V come from the Combat Simulator's own model, 200,000 fights a line, with the defender Ambushing whenever he can and "spent out" (the sitting duck) meaning he can't. Lesson 19 prices a dead man at $300, the cost to hire him again; the walk back only makes folding look better. Every figure prices one system on its own: who reads whose barrels, who blinks late in the Hustle, and who's holding a grudge still decide whether any of it was wise. ♦ Moonshine Kingdom v0.9.8 · The Almanac ♦