Card Marking as the Oldest and Widely Used Blackjack Cheating Method

Card marking is believed to be the oldest method of cheating at blackjack and any other casino card game: gamblers always tried to be able to see what cards a dealer had and they used various methods to mark cards. Marking is not very difficult actually: it is considered to be the easiest method of blackjack cheats though it does not work today as well as it was before when casinos did not have any special equipment to determine marked cards.

Development

Card marking even has its own history: as well as card bending, it was the first method of cheating; gamblers marked cards with the help of bumps or crimps first but began to use various inks or long fingernails to scratch cards when the backs of cards appeared to be of different designs later.

Women are believed to be more successful at card marking because it is easier for them to mark cards with the help of their long fingernails.

Modern technologies let cheaters using some new methods of marking cards today:

• Block-out: a cheater uses the ink of the same color as a back of a card has, and s/he colors the small white area of the card;
• Cut-out: a cheater uses a razor to scrap off a part of printed area of a card.

Professional blackjack cheaters use juice to mark cards because it is difficult to detect (such cards can not be noticed at once: special glasses are used in order to see them, or a person should be good trained in order to see such marks). Card marking with the help of juice is called to be a shade technology, and there are several types of it:

• Daub
• Juice dust
• Tint work
• Luminous marking
• Video-luminous marking

All these marks can be noticed through special glasses or contact lenses, so, it will be more difficult for a casino to detect cards marked in such a way.

Detection

Casinos are always ready to meet cheating, so, they can easily detect marked cards:

1. First of all, casinos make a deck riffling: it helps to detect cards marked with inks and nails; if there are marked cards in a deck, these marks will "dance" on the surface of cards while they are being riffled.
2. Secondly, casinos use a special light to see the backs of cards: it helps to see whether a card surface has any marks which should not be there.