Most cold floors do not contain anything hidden. After scrum cheating, the entire deck of cards is shuffled and dealt with in a known order. It is the ultimate weapon of mass destruction, and in most cases it “awakens the dead” when the smoke is gone and the hand is on it.

So what is a cold surface? How does it work in a real game?
Get the basics in your head
The radiator is a stacked surface.
A deck switch is how two decks are exchanged in the course of play.

The result is grand larceny at the card table.

When a stacked deck is secretly introduced to a game, it’s said to be cold simply because it has yet to be handled – but if you’re sweating buckets, waiting to put a cooler into a game , that deck is absorbing plenty of heat, trust me!

The only heat a cheater should really care about is from other players. Switching decks is a big move and even in the hands of an expert, is impossible if people are paying too much attention.

Not that a great cold deck move can’t look spectacular. I’ve put together a collection of my favorite switches and tweak them for performances that I practice endlessly and sometimes fool the audience with their movements.
A great cooling deck, a true cooler, should feel good and fit perfectly into the context of the game.

I’ve seen a talented magician’s tutorial that sounds incredible, but demonstrates the different cheat methods that make these moves practical, achievable, or overlooking real-world tasks worth taking the risk. During his time as a hustler on television and several times in the real world, he threw more than his fair share of deck changes. I’ve grown an appreciation for what actually works, and those majestic, awe-inspiring stunts are only a fraction of what’s needed at the table. The techniques I’ve collected vary in difficulty, but what’s really hard isn’t the ingenuity itself. To properly understand the movement, it must be used under fire. By exercising alone for 8 hours a day, you will gain the muscle memory and physical expertise needed to move. However, it takes nerves of steel to secretly perform the same moves throughout the game.

Deck switching is usually done by the dealer or the player cutting the deck. Other possibilities exist from players at the right position in relation to the dealer’s procedure to waiters, waitresses or anyone who interacts with the table for seemingly legitimate reasons.

A typical dealer switch happens after the shuffle and before or after the cut, depending on whether a confederate is sitting to the dealer’s right. Once the deck has been thoroughly shuffled, a switch is made, sometimes followed by a false shuffle to maintain the order. The deck is then presented for the cut to the dealer’s secret partner with a tiny brief (a small step or ledge) that marks where to cut.

Without a confederate, the switch might be made after the cut, just before the deal.

A mechanic (card cheater) taught me a method that can be scrutinised with nothing to see but two empty hands before and after the switch: the dealer simply carries an honest cut, gestures for the antes and the deck is already switched! The stacked deck was hidden in his sleeve using a special device and when the gesture was made for players to throw in their antes, the shuffled deck was dropped into the cheaters lap as the stacked deck was instantly delivered to the same hand.

To accomplish this, the cheater had invented that secret device and adapted another “secret something” to make the move perfect.

The deck switch happened at the best time: after a legitimate shuffle and cut and under natural cover that happens in every round of play. I promise you, if you zoomed into his hands with the Hubble Telescope, you wouldn’t see or suspect a thing and if you saw him do it with two differently coloured decks the change from a red deck to a blue deck looks like magic.

Many sleight of hand switches look incredible in the right hands but not all of them are practical. I’ve seen impressive exchanges that fool the camera but look highly suspicious to the naked eye or can be exposed as useless with two simple questions: how do you get into that and how do you get out of it?

For a cheating dealer, these are important considerations and few deck switches qualify as usable. In fact, if a dealer is getting ready to cheat you (or already has) you might spot it in their behaviour before or after that perfect move.

For a player switch, getting ready and getting rid of the cards you just switched is somewhat easier without the business of shuffling and dealing to worry about. A player switch is a powerful move if the dealer is completely honest since all suspicion flows in their direction after a loaded hand. When the cards are passed from player to player for the deal, cheaters might conspire to put a sucker between them so one can distract the dealer (and the table) while his partner makes the cut.

When presented with the cut, the cheater will execute a sequence of actions that match his honest actions earlier in the game. In other words, he appears to cut the cards in the same way he has been cutting them all night but hidden within this action is the exchange of fifty-two shuffled cards for fifty-two pre-stacked cards.

In the movie The Sting, Doyle Lonnegan performs an excellent example of a player switch when asked to cut the cards. This switch can look incredible but what sets this scene apart is that we see him prepare the cooler, then dispose of the slug using a pocket handkerchief. All attention follows the cards, so the cheater is only exposed for a split second.

The Real Hustle vs The Hendon Mob

Back in the first season of The Real Hustle, we invited members of the Hendon Mob to a private poker game under the ruse of two reality TV types (myself and Alex) who were aiming to learn poker from the professionals. In the course of that game 에볼루션카지노 I dropped more than one cooler onto the table, partly because deck switches were the subject of this scam but mostly because neither Alex nor I stood a chance against three hard-nosed professionals!

Barney Boatman, a true gent and a deadly player was knocked out by the first cooler and commented: “that was a cold deck” before retiring to the other room where our producer let him in on the scam.

When he said those words, I thought we were surely busted but it turned out it’s a common term for a hand where two or more big hands compete for the pot. Since our show was for a non poker-playing audience, I had stacked for obvious hands like fours of a kind and straight flushes.

Later he told me how he’d seen hands like that every now and then and I’ve lost four of a kind to a straight flush myself (in a fair game) so these things do happen. A subtle cooler might be safer than dealing hero hands to everyone but I’ve found some cheaters who could care less about taking time and are just there to rob the bank as quickly as possible.

The Vegas Method

In the bad old days of Las Vegas when less scrupulous managers ran the card rooms, cheaters were often employed to deal games and rip off tourists. A friend worked one of these joints where the deck switch was as easy as it gets. When a fresh tray arrived with a new dealer, there would be two decks in the tray. When you enter the game, the dealer has extended the first deck for everyone to see. These cards were in the order of the new deck, with all 52 cards separated by suits in turn.

The dealer shuffles and then trades carefully.

The change of deck was a simple failure of the procedure. At some point in the game, a house player (who was part of the scam) requested a new deck. The cards are changed and the new deck is dealt face down instead of face up. The dealer then forgets to face the card forward and proceeds to the conversion.

999 out of 1000 didn’t realize or worry that the face was invisible. When displayed, the dealer apologized for ordering a new assortment. The rest of the time only needed some fake habits and controlled cuts to kick out strangers at the table (locals and regulars can often avoid).

This simple sequence led to the difficult situation where I once mistakenly thought my friend was waiting for a deck piled up in a drawer. This was actually the usual deck for the new deck layout. When a change of cards was requested, he spread the cards face down, false shuffled, cut and dealt a round of seven stud.

When the up cards came out, they came two of hearts, three of hearts, four, five, six, seven, eight and nine of hearts!
My friend, the dealer, quipped “What are the chances of that? Must be a hundred to one!”
He quickly resolved the matter with an “accidental” misdeal and restarted the hand.