Card Game Stories! Read ’em and Weep!

“Blackjack Mechanics”

I made a thorough survey of gambling establishments near Army camps at the request of the Army’s General Staff during World War II in order to find out if the GIs were being fleeced. I found at that time that a number of the smaller joints only hired dealers who were card mechanics (a mechanic is the card sharp who does the sleight of hand), The first question asked of an applicant for the job of Black Jack dealer was "Can you deal a good second?" I know this because one of the best ways to find out if a casino is using a dealer who cheats is to apply for the job. In 1944, on one special Army assignment, I went into a casino whose name I won’t mention because it is still in operation and is now being run honestly under new management.

I approached the casino boss and asked if he could use a good Black Jack dealer.

He half-smiled. "Who recommended you?"

"No one," I told him. "But I need a job and thought you might be looking for a good number two man." A "number two man" is gambler’s slang for a second dealer, who can deal the second card from the top and make it look as though he were dealing the top card.

The half-smile was replaced by an icy look. "So you’re a mechanic. Okay, come into the office and give me a gander at what you can do."

There he told me his name was Bucky. I gave him an alias, John Orlando, and said I was from New Jersey. "Okay, John," he said. "Here’s a deck. Let me see you work."

I shuffled the cards and dealt myself the same Black Jack hand three times in a row. Bucky’s sales resistance vanished. "You’ve got a job starting tonight. I’ll give you twenty-five bucks a night and ten percent of the table’s winnings over and above our normal day’s business." Then, as an explanation of why the casino was cheating, he added, "You know our season here at the Lake is pretty short. We have to get the money in only three months."

"Yeah," I told him, "I understand."

John Orlando, however, did not report for work that night, there or anywhere else, although I had accepted two other dealing jobs in this town that same day. Each time I had to prove my ability at ripping seconds. These casinos were no exception to the general rule. The country was flooded with card mechanics, and they didn’t worry about whom they clipped, or where. GIs were fair game, like anybody else.

Today, gambling casinos of established reputation in Nevada and elsewhere fight the crooked casino operators as a menace to business. When the players eventually get wise that casinos are cheating, business drops off. Your best protection against the crooked Black Jack dealer is to know the game and to be informed on cheats and their methods.

This gambling story courtesy of:
"Scarne’s New Complete Guide to Gambling" (1986), written by John Scarne


	I'm Lloyd Hewitt, gambling aficionado and gambling story collector. I hope you like this compilation of gambling stories. I'm always interested in hearing new ones, so if you have a gambling story you'd like to tell, just , and I'll add it to my site as soon as I can.