S. W. Erdnase's The Expert At The Card Table

Sleight of Hands Cheating at card games such as poker is not something out of the ordinary. The payoff, especially if gambling, is quite rewarding. But there it is not as easy as some may think. Cheating during a game of cards take an awful lot of work and preparation. Getting past the eye of a trained individual is nearly impossible, even to those who know little of the game, cheating will be pretty obvious. In card games cheating takes many forms. It can vary from hiding cards to using complex methods to cut the deck. Cheating becomes a skill of its own and in many cases the effort put into it outweighs the gains that winning the game would bring. In modern times cheating in card games has become extremely hard in the professional scene, …show more content…
The chance to get make a quick buck out of a simple game appealed to many. For that reason gambling and games like poker became associated with thieves, bandits, and other people from the bottom of society. Cheating in a way was part of the rules. If you never got caught that meant you were good at what you did and nobody questioned your tactics. In 1902 a book called “The Expert at the Card Table” was published by a mysterious under the name S.W Erdnase. Nobody knew who he really was but what he contained in the book where some of the card game’s biggest tricks. All would be card gamblers would have some knowledge of this book. It encompassed many cheating techniques that were used by professional card hustlers of the time. What made the book such an amazing hit was the amount of clear detail and illustration, clearly whoever wrote it has an extended knowledge of the card game. As the popularity of these tricks grew it became harder to pull them off during actual games. Over the course of the next couple years gambling would become more tightly regulated. That chance to strike gold suddenly got a lot harder for …show more content…
Sometimes the advantage that you gain from the expense of the other players just isn’t enough to push you through the winning point. The thing everyone has to understand is that in order to have the slightest chance at pulling off a cheat you have to know how the game works in all levels. Basically you have to be a master before you can begin to move into the world of cheating. The chance of a cheat succeeding in the professional league is almost zero and in order to pull it off at an amateur level you have to be extremely skilled. Card magicians, card manipulators, card specialist, etc. whatever you want to call them there is no doubt that they are masters of a dishonest art. After all, it is understandable why some would go through so much trouble just for that chance to win. The gains from a single card game can make the difference in a person’s