This is a great book on the secrets of how to cheat with cards and dice at many popular games – a guide to dishonest gambling. It offers a good overview of the various methods from mechanical cheating methods to sleight of hand.

1st edition 1970, original 128 pages; PDF 82 pages.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Cheating at cards

3. Mechanical Methods: marking cards, sorts, deck switches, edge marking, daub, punch/nail marks

4. Strippers: types of strippers, Vernon’s “Bathroom Strippers”

5. Locaters: short, corner shorts, thick cards, long cards, ridge/breather crimps

6. Holdouts: Kepplinger type, bug, card index, magnetic cards, ring holdouts

7. Shiners

8. Confederates: signals, hand signals, other body signals, electronic communication

9. Card Handling

10. Palming: 3 top palms, gamblers flat palm, 3 bottom palms

11. False Shuffling: strip-out riffle shuffle, gamblers false shuffle, to retain a top stock, faro

12. False Cutting: a false cut, slip cut, Vernons “The Cold Deck Cut”

13. Crooked Dealing: seconds, bottoms

14. Miscellaneous Swindles: double lift peek, restoring a cut, top change, locaters, confederates

15. The Greatest Swindles

16. Dice: loads, caps, shaved dice, beveled dice, mis-spotted dice, magnets

17. Detecting Fake Dice

18. Crooked Dice Handling: 3 controls, blanket roll, switching

19. Find the Lady (three card Monte)

20. The Three Shell game

21. The Endless Belt (this is the chain loop swindle)

22. Elusive Aces: a brief discussion of mis-indexed gaff cards, for use in the three card Monte or other card-based scams

23. Roulette

24. Safe Bets: several mathematical and proposition type wagers

25. The Odds

26. Dice (odds)

27. Bingo (odds)

28. Blackjack (odds)

29. Poker (odds)

30. Postscript