SLIPPING THE FIVES.
Slipping the fives at cribbage is an amazing strong advantage. The mode of doing this is first to mark them in any manner so as to know them; and whenever it happens that you observe one coming to your adversary, you give him the next card under in lieu thereof, which many who are in the habit of playing much perform with extraordinary dexterity.
SADDLING THE CARDS.
Is frequently practised at cribbage, This is bending the sixes, sevens, eights, and nines, in the middle, long ways, with the sides downwards; by which it is extremely easy for you to have one of those cards for a start, by cutting where you perceive a card bent in that manner, taking due care to have the card so bent uppermost.
DEALING FROM THE BOTTOM.
Is a very common practice; it is, therefore, very necessary for you to be very watchful over your adversary while he deals.
This is a device of old date, but it is easier to be performed with the small cards used at ecarté than those generally played with at whist. It consists in secreting a certain card until an opportunity presents itself of its being available when it is produced, as implied, from the palm of the hand that secretes it. The story of the hand that was nailed to the table with a fork, and the proffered apology for the act if no card was found under it, is too well known to be repeated: but it is not a solitary instance in the play world. Some sixty years since a member of Brookes’s Club was playing at quinze with Mr. Fox. At this game a five is a principal card, and on the person alluded to displaying a five in his hand, after Mr. Fox supposed them all to have been played, he complained, with evident chagrin, of the increasing inaccuracy of his memory. Others, however, were less charitably disposed. The unfair gamester was watched, and detected in introducing a fifth five!
STEALING OUT CARDS, AND PALMING.
The cheat of stealing cards is practised as often, perhaps, as any other fraud in card playing. It is of great advantage to the gambler, and gives him an opportunity of forming very good winning hands. In whist, the most desirable cards to steal out are the “honours,” and sometimes all four will be stolen out by one man, that is, the honours of one suit; and then he will make that suit trump by keeping one of them at the bottom. This can be done by the backs as well as by the faces, for the cards in general use now by the gamblers can all be known by the backs, and a player will know by the backs where any particular card is dealt; and if he should not steal the honours, he can deal them to himself or his partner, by dealing off the second card instead of the top card, whenever the top card is one that he may want for himself; and if he should steal two of the honours out, he will hide the theft by dealing each player two cards twice; then all will have their proper number, and his theft remains hid; or he will miss giving himself a card twice during the deal, and hide the theft by that means; or he will give himself two twice during the deal, and have sixteen, while the others have but twelve each; he will then hide his theft by concealing four cards that are poor in the palm of his hand, and in gathering a trick will place all upon his bunch of tricks. And as his tricks are all bunched, the players will depend on counting the tricks of the other party to determine who has won the odd trick; and hence he succeeds in hiding his theft.