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In most of the phoners I've done so far, the interviewer starts off by assuming that cheating does not and cannot go on in televised poker, or in countless hold'em ‘em tournaments that are now part of American culture.

This is not strictly true. One of the most undetectable forms of cheating is collusion or team play. It's well-known that many professional poker players are staked out of the same bankroll and enter the same tournaments. It is not unheard of that one member of the team will deliberately lose to his ally to give him more chips and propel him into the next round.

Team players can also exchange information through signals that give team members a significant edge over other players at the table. If one player knows another's hole cards, that's a piece of information that none of the other players have and is therefore an advantage. It may not make a difference in any particular hand, but in the long run, the information will pay off. Information can be transmitted by hand signals, gestures, chip placement, and how cards are mucked, among other methods.

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I've gotten myself booked on a literary radio talk show where recent topics include genocide, the Weimer Republic, Eliot Spitzer, and contemporary poetry. To say that 52 Ways to Cheat at Poker doesn't fit the mold is a bit of an understatement, which is why I'm approaching the topic from odd angles, via mythology, folklore, and the commonalities among deceivers.

One idea is that card cheats and con men, especially the pros, share attributes with mythic and folkloric tricksters, like Anansi, the spider god of Africa, Coyote in Native American lore, and the wily Odysseus. All trickster energy is creative energy. It's also problem-solving energy, directed at the immediate goal of getting the sweet, winning the war, taking down the pot, tricking crow into dropping the grape into sly fox's mouth. Trickster is shameless, greedy, and amoral and will do whatever it takes to win the prize. This naturally gives him an edge over those who take a more blinkered approach to life. Nothing is out of bounds for trickster because there are no boundaries. Which is why trickster figures are often described as liminal figures who move easily between one world and the next; just as card cheats and con men live double lives, straddling the straight world with its rules and regs and underworld where rules are for suckers.

"Give me an effect," said the great English magician and trickster David Devant, "and I'll figure out a way to do it." Thinking magicians attack magical problems from all angles, devising multiple solutions and then choosing the best method for the conditions at hand. Card cheats attack the rules of the game in the same way, seeing how many ways the rules can be subverted. That explains why there are so many ingenious solutions to the same basic problems: how do you overcome the cut, how do you shuffle without changing the order of the cards, how do you discover what cards your opponent holds?

Originally, 52 Ways was to include more on language. All underworld slang is vital, but the lexicon of card cheating is, to my ears, especially zippy and inspired. The perps are cozeners and jugglers, sharks and sharps, grifters and mechanics, rounders and itemers, painters and artists. Cheating specialists play the lights with twinkles and glims (reflectors), or slip ice and bombs (fully stacked decks) into the game. The hustler can burn, beat, and buffalo his victim, the hapless cony, dupe, patsy, gull, sheep, lamb, pigeon or fish. Steeped in this intoxicating linguistic stew it became far too easy to turn out sentences in which mechanics hustle fish, cozeners buffalo pigeons, and sharks burn sheep. It's not a bad thing that most of this ended up on the cutting room floor.

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Allan Kronzek

52 Ways to Cheat at Poker

cards

cheating

poker

scams

card sharp

Penguin Books

books

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.

Allan Kronzek is our guest blogger during the week of March 31st. If you have any questions for Allan Kronzek, add a comment to any of his posts. Here is some brief information about 52 Ways to Cheat At Poker: How to Spot Them, Foil Them, and Defend Yourself Against Them:

How do cheats win at poker? What are the swindles, the marking systems, and other devious tools of the trade? In this fascinating look at the card sharper's art-from its origins in Renaissance Italy to the high-tech methods of today-sleight-of hand expert, Allan Kronzek reveals 52 of the most diabolical scams ever invented. You'll learn how cheats can rig a Hold'Em tournament, why cutting the cards doesn't guarantee an honest deal, how cheating crews crush the opposition, and how to spot cheaters at work (when possible!). If you've ever wondered what card sharps do and how they get away with it, 52 Ways to Cheat at Poker has the answers that can help you and your game.

About Allan Kronzek

Allan Zola Kronzek is a professional magician, writer and educator. He is the author of the New York Times best seller The Sorcerer's Companion-A Guide to the Magical World of Harry Potter (Broadway Books, co-written with his daughter Elizabeth), and the acclaimed A Book of Magic for Young Magicians-The Secrets of Alkazar. He performs and lectures on the history of conjuring at schools, colleges, libraries and museums. He was a student of crooked gambling expert Frank Garcia.

52 Ways to Cheat at Poker
How to Spot Them, Foil Them, and Defend Yourself Against Them
Allan Kronzek - Author
$13.00| add to cart
Book: Paperback | 5.11 x 7.67in | 208 pages | ISBN 9780452289116 | 25 Mar 2008 | Plume

 

 

Allan Kronzek, 52 Ways to Cheat at Poker, cards, cheating, poker, scams, card sharp, Penguin Books, books