"Everyone swap seats with the person opposite." The Deadpan said it like somebody reading the minutes of a meeting about a car park. "Yes, now."
There was a pause, and then a great scraping of chairs. One player landed on a cardigan, and another sat on the dog. People who had been playing carefully for an hour found themselves looking at the hands they had spent all night trying to read, from the other side of the table.
A player who had been losing all night found themselves, for the first time, sitting in front of a winning hand, and began to laugh in a way that worried the neighbours.
"Wow," said the Deadpan. "So exciting."
The table, which had just discovered that the player opposite had been holding four aces all evening, did not hear. They were already shouting.