Marked cards

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Marked cards are playing cards in which the value of an actually hidden card is revealed to the initiated by inconspicuous markings. The expression comes from the red word of tramps and traveling craftsmen who marked houses with certain signs ( prongs ) to give their successors information about the residents. American players refer to marked cards as readers , papers or doctored decks .

Marked cards are used in many card games for fraudulent card games. But modern magicians also use these cards to present their audience with amazing card tricks .

mark

There are innumerable methods of marking cards. Commercially available cards can be marked on the back in a variety of ways, for example by light pencil lines, scratches or, in the case of machine-made cards, by slight changes to the pattern. The backs of cards of lower quality can be different, for example if the back pattern is asymmetrically centered. The major US card manufacturers have also been printing marked cards for card-making needs since 1830. The so-called luminous readers that emerged in the 1960s are more refined and are characterized by a certain color marking, for which polarized or red-filtering glasses or contact lenses are required to recognize the card values. Occasionally, the 3D effect is also used. With this effect, the card value becomes visible through a certain focus of the card. In the 19th century, cardsharps filed their fingertips down to the bottom skin in order to feel cards marked with small pricks.

strategy

The use dovetailed cards is particularly convincing when this seemingly not the cheaters were brought into play. If a joint is discovered, the perpetrator can elegantly pull himself out of the affair in this way. Prepared cards are often apparently "forgotten" in places where people play a lot. Another method is to sell card games cheaply in bulk to hosts through apparent representatives. A third way is to mark cards of interest in the course of a game for the next rounds. Cards of popular brands can also be exchanged with a prepared game.

Contrary to what is often assumed, marked cards are hardly used to spy out other people's hands, but rather reveal to the dealer who he is dealing interesting cards to or which card is on a pile that can be swapped. The identified position of a card offers a statistically relevant advantage because it can be excluded from other players in the hand.

Countermeasures

Marked card games can not only be launched convincingly, but can also be marked or exchanged during the course of a game, so that even when playing with your own cards you cannot be sure that you are playing with clean cards. However, no serious player who plays for significant amounts of money will object if a new card game is requested several times in the course of the evening (which of course can also be marked). In casinos , the games are constantly being renewed or, as in baccarat, they are only used once. A limited method of identifying marked cards is to rustle through ("ripple") the cards, where irregularities can be discovered, as in flip books. In the case of a professionally marked game, however, you have no chance of making a mark even after a comparison lasting several minutes. In addition, there are plenty of alternative methods of spying out card values ​​without marked cards.

By far the most efficient strategy for avoiding marked cards is to refrain from playing for money with strangers. Conversely, the likelihood that a professional gamer would not know or use any tricks can be neglected.

Legal

The use of marked cards in the game of money constitutes fraud . The manufacture and sale of marked cards are permitted, but may, under certain circumstances , justify allegations of aiding and abetting fraud.

Oddities

  • The magician and scientist Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin , who was the first to write a systematic book on card-cheating, needed over a week in one case to discover the secret of an obviously marked card game.
  • The "Reformed Gambler" Green claimed in his educational shows in the 19th century that all card games were marked, which he was able to prove - through a cleverly hidden mirror. Game expert John Scarne also exaggerated the spread of marked playing cards immensely during World War II, which brought him a secure income with false play demonstrations on army bases.
  • New York's first great underworld boss Arnold Rothstein , who u. a. Manipulated baseball games, was shot dead by craps organizer George McManus in 1928 in a dispute over a game after the cards were found to be marked.
  • In the USA there was a curiosity until the 1960s that trading with marked cards was legal, but not shipping through the US Federal Post Office because of the special postal laws.

literature

  • Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin : Les Tricheries des Grecs. L'Art de Gagnerà tous les Jeux. Librairie nouvelle, Paris 1861 (French).
  • John Nevil Maskelyne : Sharps and Flats. A complete Revelation of the Secrets of Cheating at Games of Chance and Skill. Longmans, Green and Co., New York NY 1894 (English).
  • SW Erdnase : The Expert at the Card Table. A Treatise on the Science and Art of manipulating Cards. Wehman Bros., Hackensack NJ 1902 (English).
  • Frank Garcia: Marked Cards and loaded Dice. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs NJ 1962 (2nd edition as: How to detect Crooked Gambling. Marked Cards and loaded Dice. Arco, New York 1977, ISBN 0-668-04042-4 ), (Engl.).
  • John Scarne : The Odds Against Me. To Autobiography. Simon and Schuster, New York NJ 1966 (engl.).
  • Hans-Heinrich Wellmann (Red.): The gamblers. Time-Life International, Amsterdam 1980.
  • Peps Zoller: Ripped off. Marked cards and other devil's work. Magic & Gambling, M. Porstmann, Dachau 1996, catalog with back samples of marked games seized in Germany.
  • David Britland, Gazzo: Phantoms of the Card Table. Confessions of a Cardsharp. Four Walls Eight Windows, New York NY 2004, ISBN 1-56858-299-4 .
  • Steve Forte: Casino Game Protection. A comprehensive guide. SLF, Las Vegas NV 2004, ISBN 0-9759864-0-6 (English)