These peccadilloes, may for want of a better appellation, be termed clever manœuvres, finesses, ruses, and mental sleight-of-hand.
Of these I will just mention a few, beginning with the most innocent, and progressing by degrees, until I come to actual sharping. At the same time I must request my readers to fix their own limits, where honesty ends and roguery begins.
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For instance, if you are playing with an awkward adversary, who, in arranging his cards, classes his trumps too ostensibly, ought you, therefore, to avoid taking advantage of this awkwardness, as a guide to your adversary's hand?
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Again, if your adversary, through carelessness, shows his cards, or if, by holding them too near the candle, they are rendered transparent: is it necessary to tell him of it?
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Then, in playing Écarté. What is to be said of an adversary who consults the bye-standers, as if he had the right to do so, as to whether he shall play or not, and who, after a little hesitation, decides to discard? From thus acting it might be supposed, that he had a first-rate hand, and that prudence alone prompted the question. Do not be taken in: He will discard all his five cards. He wished to deceive his adversary, and if the latter is inexperienced, he will succeed in so doing.
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Another man will, before proposing, look at his counters, as if to mark the king, then, after giving you this false alarm, he asks for cards, and is only too glad if you acquiesce in his request: for not only had he no king at all, but a very bad hand.