Death's Hesitation
Death’s Hesitation is the second of the two baseline cascade rules shipped in Phase 1. It softens the cost of bust along a single specific axis — face-card busts (Jack, Queen, King) halve the would-be cascade instead of zeroing it.
“You broke on a king. He halves the take. He does not say why.”
The rule
Section titled “The rule”When a hand busts (cleared = false) AND the busting card is J, Q,
or K AND HandSpec.deathsHesitation = true:
- Run the full cascade as if the hand had cleared.
- Halve the resulting
FinalScore. - Emit a
DeathsHesitationFiretrace event before the FinalScore.
10-card busts (so a hard 20 + 5 = 25) do not trigger the softener — only J, Q, K count, per the design. Aces are weighted toward the soft-21 escape and never contribute to the bust path here.
Worked example
Section titled “Worked example”Player hand: 5♥ 6♠ K♣ (busted at 21? No — 5+6+10 = 21; suppose 5+7+K = 22).
| Step | Without DH | With DH |
|---|---|---|
| FinalScore | 0 (bust) | run cascade → 228 → halve → 114 |
The bust card was a King → face → softener fires. Pre-halve chips
and mult are preserved on the FinalScore event for transparency;
score reflects the halved value.
Why this rule exists
Section titled “Why this rule exists”Heavy Mark Charms reward you for deliberately deviating from basic strategy (hitting hard 15 chasing a pair, doubling on hard 17, etc.). Deviation is sometimes correct cascade-wise, but the cost of busting is steep. Death’s Hesitation lowers that cost on about 30% of busts (face-card density × bust-likelihood-on-deviation), making the conditional Heavy Marks survivable to play without inverting the game into “always deviate.”
The math: ~31% of cards in a fresh shoe are 10/J/Q/K. Of those, 10s don’t trigger the softener — only J/Q/K do. So roughly 23% of any next-card outcome is a face-bust candidate.
Where this lives
Section titled “Where this lives”lib/sim/cascade_resolver.dart:_bustOnFaceCard()— the gate.lib/sim/scoring_event.dart:DeathsHesitationFire— the trace event.test/sim/deaths_hesitation_test.dart— 8 unit tests covering J/Q/K triggers, 10-bust gating, soft-21 path, and Long-Game composition.
Composition with Long-Game
Section titled “Composition with Long-Game”Long-Game scales archetype mult before bust math. So:
Player hand: 5+6+K = 21 (no, that’s a hit-and-hold). Try 5+7+K = 22: hits taken = 1, archetype mult 2.0 × 1.3 = 2.6. chips = 5+7+10 = 22. Pre-halve score = 22 × 2.6 = 57 → rounds to 55? Actually
(22 × 2.6).round()= 57. Halved: 57/2 → 28 (round half-up).
Both rules are baseline-on; Heavy Marks ride on top.