Strippers
If you use or are thinking of using strippers in your card work, this post is for you! You can thank me later!
So, I was recently given a couple of stripper decks, as a gift thrown into a dice order I'd made at Slim Card Co. Now if you don't know about Slim Card Co. head along to the website to take a look at the mouth-watering array of goodies on offer there. Slim Card Co. produces excellent card and dice supplies and gaffs. ABOUT CARDS is ...well... about cards, but I enjoy dabbling with dice, which are a ton of fun if you're a gambling enthusiast, so I won't get too far off track here, but I'll post separately soon a little more about the latest addition to my dice collection, which I'm very pleased with, and is another example of the fine gambling work being produced at Slim Card Co.
Back to the strippers!
For readers here, I don't expect I'm adding anything new here to your knowledge by explaining what strippers are and how they're used, but for those unfamiliar, strippers are a specially prepared deck of cards that allow you to locate specific cards from a genuinely shuffled deck. There are various types of strippers and the basic gaff invoves trimming/shaving the edges of cards in different ways so specific cards can be invisibly stripped out during a shuffle and cut sequence. But there are many different types of strippers and one of the two decks I received is a deck of N cards.
Slims N cards are as good as you'll find.There are several combination decks available on the site, and you can also request custom combinations to your own preference/requirements.
Perhaps you're unfamiliar with this type of gaff, and you may need a little more info. There is enough info to get started right there on the SlimCard site. For a long time, there was very little to find about this type of work. A handful of folks have put out work on this gaff over recent years and even though ithe information is easy enough to find, it's still not especially well-known, and chances are if you were to run into someone using it well, you wouldn't know it. Despite an increase in availability, very few will have actually adopted this gaff in their work. Why? Well, for starters it is not easy to use. The technique is advanced and requires tons of practice to use. You might get hold of a deck, and be able to pull the cards in your first couple of tries, but it's another thing to use deceptively during a shuffle, without looking as though something very unusual is going on. Imagine trying to slide the cellophane sleeve off a new deck of cards without peeling off an end first and you get the picture of what it looks like when it is done badly... and probably what it will look like the first time... the second time... and for the next year or so.
The N deck I got from Slim makes it possible to strip three four-of-a-kinds: aces, kings and queens from a shuffled deck as you please in any order you choose. But the stripped cards needn't be four-of-a-kinds, and there are many cool possibilities you might explore once you've played around with these.
Slim also makes "N4s" and "N5s" making it possible to strip either 4 or 5 combinations. I'm sure you could devise a special request for other set of cards to strip out. If you buy an N-stripper deck, I understand there is also access to a hidden video that shows "how to really use these types of cards so that no one will ever know they are gaffed!"
Whether you're interested in buying a deck of strippers or not, there are so many other things to like about the Slim Card Co. site including a Blog section with some great stuff including this article about N-Strippers.
The other deck I received are "very fine" strippers.
These are indeed very fine, in two different ways. First, they are finely finished so as you'd never doubt them as factory standard. There is no sign of work. You could comfortably have these in a game without fear of being discovered, because second, they are so "finely" trimmed, it's very difficult to see or feel.
Other than as a kid using a very easy to use stripper deck like those found in a magic shop, I haven't really done much work with strippers before, so it took me a bit of experiimentation to get the feel for pulling cards so finely stripped. But I've gotten more used to these now and I've found that a slight loose gathering at the end of a riffle shuffle puts enough air between the cards to make the stripped cards easier to jog to one side during a squaring action. They take a very light touch.
Anothe common type of stripper also available at SCCo. is the belly-stripper. Applications for strippers can be found in a bunch of standard texts, perhaps the most direct application for poker outlined in How Gamblers Win on p29 and another application on p51. You can find more information about strippers in many other gambling titles old and new including Gambling Scams by D. Ortiz (p48) and How to Cheat at Texas Holdem (J. B. Born) p57-60. Gentleman Jack Newtons book "Confessions of a Cross-road Gambler has a great story of his taking down a peek game using strippers, and offers a few tips on preparing your own cards using sandpaper. In his online lecture Jack Farrell demonstrates and explains an application for Gin Rummy.
Elsewhere online with a little searching there is a book that I believe has a bunch of great stuff using the stripper deck, called "A New Angle" by Michael Feldman and Ryan Plunkett, and although I haven't read it, I have heard great things about it. Along with some bellies from Slim Card Co. I plan to pick up a copy sometime to read with cards in hand when I next have a free weekend.
Thanks a million Slim!
