My Not So Cheating Heart, by Allan Kronzek:

The only time I regularly cheated at cards was playing gin with my 93-year-old dad. I stacked the deck by memorizing the discards during one game, then false shuffled so they'd appear in sequence during the next game. I also deal "seconds" and "bottoms." I did this not to win the big bucks, but to keep from being bored out of my mind as dad was, with all due respect, a mediocre player. To atone, I'd make terrible plays and let him win half of the games.

My parents were scrupulously honest and mother would have been appalled had she lived to see the title of her son's latest offering: 52 Ways to Cheat at Poker. I would have explained that the title was meant to be provocative, but the intent of the book was to forestall cheating, not teach it (read the subtitle, mom). But this is only partially true. My more selfish reason for writing the book-apart from wishing to get rich quick-was to find out the very latest about what serious cheats know about deception, especially deception with cards.

Hardly a day has passed in the last 30 years when I did not have a deck of cards in my hands, practicing shuffles and palms, steals and replacements. I love card magic; I consider it an art, capable of spinning heads and evoking meaningful questions about how we see the world. Both card magic and card cheating begin at the same time, in the late 15^th century. Card cheats quickly developed an arsenal of weapons that was, for centuries, completely unknown to most magicians. Cheats invented false dealing, false cuts and shuffles, card switches, deck switches, and stacking procedures. They worked out invisible card-marking systems, invented ingenious codes, and discovered ways to secretly gather and transmit information. And most impressively, they figured out how to get away with these deceptions at close range, without anyone noticing.

This is fascinating stuff for magicians-the psychology as well as the technical aspects-and is now part of what serious cardmen study when they master their art (the reverse is not true; magicians sleights have almost no application at the gambling table). But it ought to be of interest anyone who plays cards for serious money. Cheating at poker has been part of American culture since the 1840s, and there's every reason to assume that it is alive and well today. Yet, amazingly, many poker players take a head in the sand approach. They don't cheat, therefore neither do the people they play with. And besides, they'd know it when they see it. But the truth is, most people who are cheated have no idea they've been cheated. And even when they suspect the worst, they have no notion how to think about it-being completely unaware of the range of scams, concepts and methods that have been dreamed up over the last 400 years. And that, really, is what 52 Ways is about: what can be done, how it's done, and how to prevent it. And you don't need to play cards to be amazed by the thinking.

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Allan Kronzek

52 Ways to Cheat at Poker

cards

cheating

poker

scams

card sharp

Penguin Books

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