Marked Cards: Mystery, or Misery?
Most marked decks have elaborate patterns on their backs, coded so that anyone who's looking can see that, for instance, the left-hand bush has six leaves when the card's a 6, four when it's a 4, and so on.
It all seems discreet enough, but once you start looking at the cards and comparing patterns, the differences just leap out at you. It's similar to what happens when you hold two pages of a typed manuscript next to each other.
If the pages are largely alike, whatever mistakes or differences there are will stand out as though in boldface type.
Because marked cards are so easy to see once, a person gets suspicious, and because it's very hard for a cheater to quickly dispose of the evidence when it's a whole deck, marked cards are rarely used by serious card mechanics.
It may be taking your life in your hands even to bring them to a friendly game of bridge.
Other devices seldom used by serious cheats include shiners - little finger-mirrors peeking at the bottom of the deck, and punches, which the user can press into cards and mark them.
The trouble with both of these little toys is that they have to be worn on the fingers, right out there where everyone can - and probably will - see them.
Some cheats try to conceal the punch by wearing it inside an adhesive bandage, so don't play poker when anyone in the game has a hurt finger. Still another rather clumsy way of marking cards is to rub a little colored ointment or greasepaint on the back.
If you can ditch the container, you can feign innocence if someone sees that the cards are smudged.
The trend today seems to be away from such physical aids as marked cards and shiners toward increasingly skilled manipulations with the hands.
The use of devices to cheat slot machines has been thwarted by new, cheat-proof designs, and the increase in places where people can play cards and dice legally has decreased the places where the obvious cheating equipment can be used, even once.
To one who has no such skills, the expertise of a sleight-of-hand master is almost unbelievable. In most cases, it's certainly good enough to fool anyone except another master.
But the trend in gambling is away from all overt cheating toward legitimate profit via high volume - something like a supermarket. The day may not be far off when the colorful gambling individuals are as extinct as the brave engineer on the steam locomotive.
The age of the shady character is drawing to a close and being replaced by the age of the National General Corporation Subdivision: Gambling.