Cheating at Card Games

Though I should have preferred sparing you the reading of this chapter, we had better face facts about playing poker cards for money. And one of these facts is that more cheating takes place at illegally operated card games than at all other forms of gambling. The main reason, of course, is that the average card player knows little or nothing about card cheating techniques and hence is easily victimized.
My observations of a lifetime have convinced me that more cheating takes place at private, or so-called friendly, card games than at all other forms of gambling combined. The main reason, of course, is that cheating in private games is much easier. Ten out of every 100 male and female card players will cheat in private games when they have the opportunity and think they can get away with it. Many of these cheaters are highly respected in their communities businessmen, sportsmen, politicians, civic leaders, and just plain housewives. Although most of these people are other wise honest, they think nothing of trying to steal your last dime in a card game. Private card gambling seems to bring out the worst in many people.
The one in ten ratio varies from game to game and town to town, depending on the ability of the players to detect cheating. A knowledge of cheating methods and the ability to detect them is your only protection against dishonest players in private games. It is for this reason that the most ethical, fastidiously honest card games are those in which the players are top–notch gamblers, gambling operators, gambling –house employees, and cardsharps. When they play together the game is nearly always honest. It has to be, because they play in an atmosphere of total and icy distrust, and their exhaustive knowledge of the mechanics of cheating makes using this knowledge much too dangerous. They do not cheat because they dare not.
In a big-time money card game patronized by men and women who know little or nothing about cheating techniques, the odds are two to one that a card cheater is at work. Even bridge tournaments, where little or no money is at stake, are infested with bridge cheats. More than 500 bridge tournaments are played annually in this country and few, if any, are completed without one or more incidents in which a team appeals to the tournament directors for redress from some unfair practice allegedly committed by an opposing team. And much more tournament cheating goes undetected by the players. I know because I have seen it.
Some writers of books on card games contend that explanations of card-cheating methods have no legitimate place in the proper study of card games. They claim that the friendly card game is no place for suspicion and distrust. Let us say an opponent fails to offers you the deck for the cut and you call his attention to this omission; let us say that in playing gin rummy he has a peculiar habit of peeking at the second card of the stack when picking off the first card and you ask him to avoid this eccentricity. He is offended.

A beautiful friendship ends. This, these writers say, is to be avoided. This is rubbish. There is no more excuse for illegal play at any money card game than for dishonest practice in any other human activity. If a player can’t abide by the rules of the game, he deserves any embarrassment it causes him. He should obey the rules or get out of the game, and let’s not allow any false consideration of personal friendship to obscure the issue.
Three Kinds of Card Cheats

There are three kinds of card cheats: the amateur, the semi-professional, and the professional. I call the amateur that not because he doesn’t win money cheating but because he is one who earns part of his living by cheating but lacks the manipulative skill of the real cardsharp, and who, when he is working single, has to depend upon marked cards and other gaffed gambling equipment. The professional cardsharp is the skilled sleight-of-hand expert who has spent many hours in practice to gain the necessary proficiency in crooked card manipulation. He is called a card mechanic, and he usually travels a lot, seldom staying in one spot too long. cheats working together are known as a card mob. The mob is usually made up of a card mechanic, a bankroll man who supplies: the necessary money to finance the operation, a couple of shills, and several stirrers. The latter are often good-looking girls who pick 1 up victims on the pretense of taking them to: their hotel rooms, and steer them instead into] the crooked game.
The semi-pro who works with a cardsharp helps by directing attention away from the cards at the moment the sharper makes his crooked move, by signaling the value of his land, by making the right kind of cut when given the deck by the sharper, etc.
The honest player’s best protection against these crooks is to learn enough about their methods so that he can spot the most common cheating moves when they occur. The crooked angles, ruses, subterfuges, sleights, and mechanical methods are so many and so varied that a detailed description of them all would more than fill this book. The most common methods can, however, be spotted when you know what to look for. Most of them require unnatural moves or actions on the part of the cheat. You may never be able to catch the expert cardsharp’s bottom or second deal at the split second that it is made, but there is a Way of recognizing the expert card mechanic for what he is by the way in which he holds the deck. I shall try in the succeeding pages to give I you the information you need to protect yourself.

The Amateur Cheat

It is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the amateur cheat and the through going, no- holds-barred, but honest player. I used to play Gin Rummy with an elderly lady who had a habit, after the cards had been cut for her deal, of glancing down and noting the bottom card of the deck as she squared it. Harmless?
She peeked at a card that would never get into the play of the hand. Harmless? Well....Her knowledge that the card is dead is useful information in planning her play; it is pertinent information not available to me. She is a cheat. And she is the most dangerous kind-the amateur cheat. The amateur is usually a friend whom you don’t think of suspecting and who for that reason can get away with murder. The good-natured, trusting American card chumps collectively lose billions of dollars annually to friends and acquaintances whose card-playing tactics are less than honest.
For every dozen crooked moves made by the agate-eyed professional card sharp, the amateur will blandly and brazenly attempt a hundred swindles. At Poker the amateur cheat will connive with a confederate and each will give the other some sort of a signal when he has a good hand. and wants a raise. At Gin Rummy, Pinochle, or poker canasta, the amateur cheat will add an extra five or ten points on the count of the hand. Trapped in a recount-any embarrassment? No! Aren’t we all entitled to a certain percentage of error?
At Black Jack, when the dealer is busy, the amateur cheat will call a phony Count on his cards, collect his cash and account the feat an act of skill with not the slightest objection from his conscience. At Bridge he will deliberately drop a card to the floor and while leaning down to retrieve it try to get a peek at an Opponent’s hand. He likes to think of this maneuver as bridge strategy.
What do you do when you suspect a friend or acquaintance of cheating? It can develop very easily into a sticky situation because it is possible that an honest player may unconsciously do some of the things that cheaters do, and your suspicion may be unjustified. There is no need to raise a hue and cry. Your best bet is to demand quietly and graciously that the rules of the game be strictly followed. This should in most cases remedy what is wrong or looks wrong. If not, then make some polite excuse and leave the game. This will give no offense and do no harm to anyone’s sensibilities or reputation or to your pocketbook. Rules are made to be followed-or broken revealingly-by players. A friend told me once, “John, I play Poker with a good friend. He never offers me the cards for the cut. I’m afraid to insist on the cut because he may think I’m accusing him, and I value our good relationship. What shall I do?”
I asked him who was the winner between them, and he said his friend was a few hundred dollars ahead. “I don’t know whether your online poker game is lousy or whether you’re being cheated,” I told him. “I’ve never seen you and your friend play, but I know that if the cards were always cut you would not be suspicious of your friend-and suspicion is a lot worse than losing a few hundred dollars.”
You must decide such things for yourself. As for me, I play by the rules, and I play no more with the old lady who peeks at the bottom card