If you are a card counter, many times, when sitting at third base at a blackjack game, it can be difficult to see the specific denomination of a card across the table at first base or the player next to first.
During the course of a game cards can get partially covered up by other cards or chips and you can’t always see the numbers or pits. To help overcome this problem take a deck of cards and cut off pips or numbers at each corner.
Or, you can get a bottle of White-Out, or sometimes called Liquid Paper, that is the white liquid that a typist would use when making corrections on a typewriter page before computes came along. You can find it at any stationary store. Apply some of white-out to the pips on each card corner. You don’t have to do it to the court cards, since they are all the same value, but include the 10s.
After they dry, practice reading the spots on the cards instead of the numbers or pips. This will help you to recognize each card, whether it is partially covered or just too far away.
BET YOU DIDN'T KNOW
• The pips or indices numbers on the corners of playing cards were first introduced in 1871. These decks were originally known as “squeezers.”
• Most historians believe that the earliest playing cards originated in (or before) the 9th century in Central Asia, probably China and Hindustan.
• During the Napoleonic Wars, French prisoners in England would occupy their months of confinement by making playing cards out of the leftover bones of their dinners. They cleaned the bones by burying them for a time and then unearthed them, cut small silvers from them and decorated them with painted suit signs.
• The Japanese video game company, Nintendo, is one of the most influential in the industry and Japan’s third most valuable listed company. It has been in business for over 120 years and its original primary business was manufacturing playing cards.
• In the mid-1600s the biggest fine for students in Harvard University was not for fighting or drinking but for playing cards.
• In 1656 the Pilgrims enacted a law, which fined adults for playing cards and subjected adults and even children to a public whipping for a second offence.
• In a deck of standard playing cards the King of Hearts is the only king without a mustache.
• At one time the Joker was originally the highest card in the game of Euchre, a trick-taking card game commonly played with four people in two partnerships with a deck of 32 standard playing cards.
• Common entertainment in colonial days included playing cards. However, there was a tax levied when purchasing playing cards, but only applicable to the “Ace of Spaces.” To avoid paying the tax, people would purchase 51 cards instead. Yet, since most games require 52 cards, these people were thought to be stupid or dumb because they weren’t “playing with a full deck.”
• Bryan Berg currently holds the world record for tallest house of cards, a 25 foot 9 7/16-inch-tall “skyscraper” completed at the State Fair of Texas on 14 October 2007. Berg used 2,400 decks of playing cards to build that huge tower.
