Stacking The Deck
Loser’s Guide to
Winning Poker
By: Bobby Grisham
Stacking
The
Deck
There are many names given to the card mechanic; cheat, swindler, hustler, low-life, crook, scamp…to name a few. If you are one of the millions of people who use these terms, please stop calling me names. It’s not polite.
Stacking a deck of cards is much easier than you probably think. As you read this tutorial and look at the illustrations, you may think ‘I can’t do that’, but I’m telling you, you can! With a surprisingly small amount of practice, you will know all of the hole cards in your opponents’ hands. How good you become will be limited only by your memory and the time you devote to practice. If you are one of the three people, who prefer an honest game, you will still want to read this so as to make it easier to spot a cheater in your game.
Stacking a deck of cards is almost all in the thumbs. When you riffle shuffle, you remove the top half of the deck with one hand, (we’ll say the right), and hold the lower half with your left hand. You then riffle them together. Practice until you can make only one card at a time from your left hand, fall on top of the cards in your right hand. Start off doing this as slowly as you need to. Speed will come. If you watch this one card that you are shuffling onto the top, very closely as it falls, you will be able to identify it. If it’s moving too fast for you to see it, then slow down. Speed will come with practice.
Once you can place one card at a time from the lower half of the deck onto the upper half, and see what the card is, you are already a huge step towards stacking the deck.
Illustration #1
As you can see in the photograph, (illustration #1), the ace of clubs is being dropped onto the top of the deck by the left thumb.
Now, let’s say you are playing seven card stud heads up, (one on one); the card you place on top of the deck is the six of hearts. This will be your opponent’s card. The next card is yours. It doesn’t really matter what it is, because you’re going to see it anyway. The next card that falls is the king of diamonds. Now make a false cut, (which we will explain shortly), and deal the cards. Your opponent is holding the king of diamonds and the six of hearts. This is not stacking the deck, per se. But it is a giant leap in the right direction and is actually as much as you need to know to be able to rack up on the money. However, to get a little more sophisticated, if you add a third player to the game, you will want to remember the cards in pairs.
Let’s say the first card you shuffle on top is the jack of diamonds. The next card on top is the ten of diamonds. These are your opponent’s cards but neither opponent will hold both of them. The last card on top will go to the player on your left, i.e. the ten of diamonds. The jack will go to the next player. Okay? Good. The next card that falls on top is yours. The card after that is the deuce of diamonds. The deuce will fall with the jack on the deal. The next card on top is the king of diamonds. It will fall with the ten.
So in your mind, you will remember the cards sort of like this…jack of diamonds, then, add to that, the ten of diamonds. Ignore the next card because that card will be yours. Since the next card on the deck is the deuce, you will remember jack, deuce, ten. Now the next card is the king so you will say jack, deuce--ten, king. Now reverse them in your mind, and say king, ten—deuce, jack. Then king and the ten of diamonds will be in the hand to the left of you. The deuce and the jack of diamonds will be in the next hand.