Cheat
The cheating is a special form of fraud.
Cheating is probably as old as gambling for money. Already in ancient Egyptian graves from 3500 BC. Chr. Were manipulated cubes found. There is no known game of chance in which manipulation has not been practiced or at least attempted. The methods are extremely diverse, refined and sometimes very complex mechanically.
Common techniques
Cheating often occurs in dice or card games and in all games in which chance and incomplete information play a role.
Very common methods are:
- Exchanging cubes with prepared cubes that have different winning probabilities due to an asymmetry of the shape or the position of the center of gravity
- back-labeled ( " pronged ") playing cards
- inconspicuous mirrors ("shiner")
- Kibitz
- Swap whole card games with specially arranged games ("cooler")
- Incorrect mixing (seemingly authentic, but controlled mixing)
- Giving wrong
- Signals among secretly allied players
Professional cardsharps use such tricks extremely sparingly, but in most games the occasional card game is enough to considerably improve the probability of winning. B. only to the immense advantage of a player in backgammon , who is granted the right to determine the number of pips on just one die himself at a desired point in time during a game.
Pure cheating games
Some card games exist exclusively as cheating games and in reality cannot be played honestly.
- Caraway leaves (three card monte): Three cards are swapped quickly, giving the other player the impression that they can follow the winning card.
- Hütchenspiel (three shell game): The same with three nut shells or the like and a ball...
These games are not games of chance in the strict sense of the word, since it is not luck, but the apparent possibility of observation that prompts the player to bet. If the player actually had a chance, the game maker would be broke immediately. Both tricks are also part of the standard repertoire of serious magicians .
Countermeasures
The methods used by cardsharps are so numerous and sophisticated that we can only advise against gambling with strangers for money.
Known cardsharps
- Johannes Kepplinger
- Milton Franklin Andrews
- George McManus
- "Titanic Thompson"
- "The Hiker"
- "Con Baker" (Conrad Baker)
Well-known card game experts
- John Scarne
- Ricky Jay
- Steve Forte
- Darwin Ortiz
literature
- Gerolamo Cardano : Liber de Luder Alea. 1524 (Latin).
- Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin : Les Tricheries des Grecs dévoilées. L'art de gagner à tous les jeux. Librairie nouvelle, Paris 1861 (French).
- John Nevil Maskelyne : "Sharps and Flats". A complete revelation of the Secrets of Cheating at the games of chance and skill. Longmans & Co., London 1894 (English).
- SW Erdnase : Artifice, ruse and subterfuge at the card table. A treatise on the science and art of manipulating cards. Frederick J. Drake, Chicago 1902 (also: The expert at the card table. The classic treatise on card manipulation. With a new foreword by Martin Gardner . Dover Publications, New York NY 1995, ISBN 0-486-28597-9 ), (English).
- Frank Garcia: Marked cards and loaded dice. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs NJ 1962 (2nd edition: How To Detect Crooked Gambling. Marked Cards and Loaded Dice. Arco, New York NY 1977, ISBN 0-668-04042-4 ), (English).
- John Scarne : The Odds Against Me. An autobiography. Simon and Schuster, New York NY 1966 (English).
- Hans-Heinrich Wellmann (Red.): The gamblers. Time-Life International, Amsterdam 1980 ( Time-Life Books - The Wild West ).
- David Britland, Gazzo: Phantoms of the Card Table. High Stakes, Harpenden 2002, ISBN 1-8434-4003-2 ( High stakes. Cards ), (English).
- Steve Forte: Casino game protection. A comprehensive guide. SLF Publishing et al., Las Vegas NV 2004, ISBN 0-9759864-0-6 (English).
- Steve Forte: Poker Protection. Cheating ... and the World of Poker. SLF Publishing, Las Vegas NV 2006, ISBN 0-9759864-1-4 (English).
