How to Cheat at Cards: Stacking the Deck

my name is daniel roy and today i'm going to explain the most perfect of all the card cheating techniques stacking the deck [Music] so what does it mean to stack the deck well stacking the deck refers to any situation where you secretly rearrange the cards as you shuffle them now i've just given these cards some shuffles and cuts and yet i've been able to control all four kings however what i just did is not stacking the deck all i did was to keep the four kings on top so in other words the four kings began on top of the deck and i used some shuffles and cuts that makes it look like i'm shuffling the kings back into the deck but actually i'm able to bring them all right back to the top stacking the deck refers to situations where you actually change the position of the cards in such a way that after the cards are dealt out you or another player in a game will get the winning hand so i'll give you an example using the four kings and the same shuffling technique and there's actually a specific formula for stacking the deck now this formula was published in 1902 in a book called the expert at the card table by s w erdnase some people speculate that he was a card sheet others think he might have been a sleight of hand enthusiast posing as a card sheet it's unclear what we do know is that his name s w erdnase spelled backwards reads e s andrews now to this day no one actually knows erdnase's true identity which considering that he was a card sheet revealing the secrets of his trade for money is probably what he wanted so here's the formula for stacking the four kings for a five-handed game of cards i will leave them face up and i'm going to recite the formula out loud and i'll do it slowly so that you can follow along so you start by taking one king and you put it on the bottom then you undercut half the deck you injog the top card you run one two three four five six seven eight cards and then you shuffle off leaving that last king on top then you undercut to the out jog run one two three four cards throw to the break run one card in jog the next card run one two three four five six seven eight cards and then you shuffle off then you undercut to the out jog again drop everything below the break run one two three four cards throw and you're done so let's see if the stack worked on the first round i receive a king this hand here is called uh pocket kings they say that three of a kind is really all you'd ever need to get the money but just to be sure i stacked myself all four kings but you won't really see an overhand shuffle stack these days because it's a problematic shuffle first it's not very thorough but secondly you have to pick the cards up off the table which means other people could catch a glimpse of the bottom card or they could see a card in the middle as the cards are being shuffled these days you're much more likely to see the riffle shuffle where the cards are split in half on the table and then rippled together and you can see that the cards are mixed based on the pattern of this interlace and the riffle shuffle is often combined with cutting sequences like this and you often riffle shuffle the cards multiple times yet it's still possible to control cards like for example the four kings so what's going on in this riffle shuffle control well let's take a look with the king's face up on top of the deck when i riffle shuffle the cards i'm simply letting the kings fall last so if i spread them out you'll see that all the cards are being mixed i just left all four kings on top in other words i just made sure that when i ended the shuffle the four kings all stayed together on top now this is rather transparent if you just keep leaving the top cards on top so you often combine it with cutting sequences like this that appear to lose the kings in the deck but actually you're able to hold their position and bring them right back up to the top but once again that was not an example of stacking the deck that was just controlling cards where they start on top and i bring them back to the top it's also possible to stack the cards with the riffle shuffle so let's take a look at some riffle stacking so the four kings once again begin on top of the deck and i'm going to give these cards a series of shuffles and during these shuffles i'm not really concerned with mixing the cards rather i'm much more concerned with repositioning those kings so that when i deal at a five-handed game of poker the four kings will end up in my hand so let's see if the stack worked you can see that on each round i receive a king the reason this works is because in those shuffles i was able to put exactly four cards in between each of the four kings that's why there are four other players and all four kings ended up in my hand so let's take a look at this riffle stacking procedure with the kings face up so this time the four kings begin on top of the deck and i will spread the cards out after each shuffle so after this first shuffle you can see that i have added exactly four cards one two three four cards in between the king of clubs and the king of hearts i'll do this again with this next shuffle on this shuffle you'll notice that i have added exactly one two three four cards in between the king of spades and the king of hearts now the third shuffle is where it gets tricky because i'm going to add four cards in between the next two kings there's one two three four but you'll notice that i've had to be careful to not accidentally shuffle cards into this region here because otherwise i would mess up my stack and now all that's left is to shuffle four cards on top of the king of diamonds and if i spread out the deck you'll see there's now one two three four king one two three four king one two three four king one two three four king so when i deal out the cards of course the kings will all fall into my hand because there are four other players and i put exactly four cards in between each king and that's why i receive all four kings so why did i describe riffle stacking as the perfect technique well here's the reason in most other cheating moves you can miss and if you miss you get caught so for example with a bottom deal let's say i had the king of diamonds on the bottom of the deck and i wanted to do a bottom deal but partway through the bottom deal i missed the card and it ended up sticking out of the deck this is not a very flattering picture at the card table and this does not end well the difference with riffle stacking unlike a bottom deal is that if i miss the worst thing that happens is it's just a normal riffle shuffle there's nothing to see or catch even if i miss so i'll give you an example i'll use the king of spades and the king of diamonds and i'm going to intentionally miss so let's say i wanted to put four cards in between them but oh no instead of four cards i got three there's one two three cards in between these kings the thing is there was nothing suspicious that was just a riffle shuffle just like any other riffle shuffle so this means i won't be able to stack the deck for my own hand this time but i just wait until the next hand or until the next time that i'm allowed to shuffle the cards nothing really bad happens even though i missed so this is the beauty of riffle stacking the best case scenario is you're able to deliver the winning hand or known cards to another player's hand or to your own hand and the worst case scenario is you just do a riffle shuffle and oh no you have to move on to the next hand now of course there's a caveat to this let's say i was going to stack the king of diamonds and the king of spades and my riffle stacking was so bad that it looked like this right obviously i was overdoing the hesitation at the end of the shuffle there but there's no way that's going to fly i mean it's painfully obvious that i was putting cards in between the king of spades and the king of diamonds and that is of course one way that you could get caught riffle stacking but as long as your riffle stacking doesn't suffer from horrible hesitation like that and as long as you're able to shuffle the cards with a consistent rhythm it's very hard to detect in fact riffle stacking is one of those techniques where even if you are proficient in it you can still get fooled by someone else who's really good at riffle stacking there have been cases where one cheat who's proficient in riffle stacking has been cleaned out by another cheat who was just slightly better at riffle stacking because one she couldn't tell that the other cheat was doing anything suspicious and probably couldn't run up the same hands that the other cheat could so usually they say it takes one to no one but with riffle stacking that's not even enough sometimes now that riffle stack that i demonstrated with the four kings that's extremely unrealistic and you'd pretty much never see anyone do that first four kings is an overkill poker hand and secondly four cards is a lot to stack usually it's not even necessary to stack four cards for your own hand usually just two cards or maybe a three of a kind is enough and there are certain scenarios where all you have to do is stack known cards for one player's hand if you are a very skilled card player just knowing what cards you're going to receive in advance or knowing the cards that another player will receive is more than enough to win so this time we won't use a four of a kind instead we'll use just a pair of cards like for example the two red aces this time i won't stack the deck for a five-handed game instead i'll stack the deck for a six-handed game so the two red aces go on top of the deck and i will attempt to stack them for a six-handed game of poker in just two shuffles so now let's deal that's one two three four five six one two three four five six so let's take another look at that sequence but this time in slow motion [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] now as you can see my two thumbs were doing different things one thumb was manipulating the red aces and the other thumb was putting cards in between them this is rather inefficient and there are some more nuanced stacking techniques that help balance the roles of the two hands a little bit better and as a result you don't have as much hesitation i'll give you an example so i'll start by putting the red aces on top of the deck and i'll cut them into the middle and now the shuffle sequence begins and this time you'll notice that there's a lot less hesitation and that's because i'm dividing up the responsibilities differently between my thumbs yet when i deal out a five-handed game of poker you'll notice that i receive the two red aces so now i'll repeat this demonstration but this time without looking at the cards so the two red aces start on top and i will cut them into the middle and now i will turn away and close my eyes so hopefully you should notice the same lack of hesitation yet this time i should still be able to stack the two red aces from my own hand so let's see what happens when i deal on this first round i receive a red ace and on the second round the other red ace so indeed it's possible to riffle stack without looking so why would someone like me learn riffle stacking i'm not a card sheet i'm a magician i like to entertain people perform magic make videos about magic and sleight of hand on the internet well it's because it's really fun to practice riffle snacking is a bit like hitting a baseball blindfolded of course you can do it with or without looking at the cards as you just saw but the reason it's like hitting a baseball blindfolded is that you wouldn't know where the baseball landed until after you took off the blindfold similarly with riffle stacking you don't know whether it worked or not until you deal out the cards that's the analogy dealing the cards is like taking the blindfold off so you can do your best to stack the cards correctly but it's always a mystery as to whether you nailed it until you deal them out and of course if you get it right you try to do it a little bit more quickly or smoothly the next time and if you get it wrong you have to figure out what happened and then course correct so it's just a really fun technique to practice so i figured that i would conclude with a hilariously unrealistic demonstration of riffle stacking this time i will attempt to stack a royal flush in spades a totally overkill poker hand for a ten-handed game of texas holdem and i'll do it in just two shuffles which is far fewer shuffles than you would ever use in a real game procedure so the royal flush and spades begins on top of the deck now the sequence begins here goes here's the first shuffle and here is the second shuffle [Music] and of course after you shuffle the cards you always have to cut now i said it was going to be a 10-handed game of texas hold'em so that's one two three four five six seven eight nine ten king of spades that's a good sign one two three four five six seven eight nine ten jack of spades another good sign vernicard deal the flop and on the flop you'll see we've got a queen of spades and an ace of spades then you deal the turn and then you deal the river and that should be a royal flush in spades for a ten-handed game of texas holden now despite the thousands of hours that i've spent riffle stacking i am but a magician luckily for you with the permission of my friend who wishes to remain anonymous you can see what this looks like in the hands of a true expert so he's going to stack three aces for a six-handed game of poker so he'll start by placing these three aces on top of the deck now notice in these shuffles there's literally no hesitation the pacing is even on both sides of the shuffle it just looks like he's innocently riffling the cards together now he'll deal five cards into a pile and then the sixth card to himself each time and hopefully that should be all three cases so that's what riffle stacking looks like in the hands of a true expert in fact he's got to be one of the top three living practitioners of this technique in the whole world right now thanks so much for watching i hope you enjoyed if you like this video please give it a like and if you want to see more consider subscribing to the channel or following me on social media if you're interested in taking private lessons i teach magicians of all levels or if you want to book a show you can contact me by email or on my website links are in the description see you next time

Channel: Daniel Roy

Views: 357,051

Keywords:

Id: 0EluYGR291M

Length: 14min 1sec (841 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 24 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Saikuringo]

Whenever I've played home poker games there was always a rule that the person to the left of the shuffler had to cut the deck in half to their choosing. I'd never realised why, but now see that it circumvents the tactic shown in the video.

[u/FunkoXday]

Interesting

[u/TROFiBets]

Always ways around

[u/Saikuringo]

Could you elaborate on one of the hundred ways where someone who didn't shuffle randomly cuts the deck and the cards are still stacked?