Playing the Light
Imagine if every deck of cards in the world was secretly marked and you knew how to read the secret markings. "Playing the light" or in simple terms - using a small reflective surface to secretly read each card, essentially gives you that power. This tiny but powerful secret helper means that you'll know any card without looking at its face, even with a deck you've never seen or touched before.
There are a bunch of techniques for playing the light, including getting the information while shuffling, dealing, cutting, passing the deck to someone, or simply holding the deck in your hands. As with most techniques, the real secret to this technique is not tipping what you're doing, by studying the cards for too long, or looking at your hands at the wrong moments. A good peek needs to happen within a perfectly inconspicuous and well-choreographed action. Looking at the cards need to seem perfectly motivated or the game is up.
A good cheat has every angle covered and knows how important it is not to be suspected, much less detected using such a device, and so will have a method for keeping the device completely hidden when it is not in use, and a way to make it disappear completely should the cheat be confronted and searched.
Small reflectors can be introduced and quickly removed from play using a holdout device worn on the body. Complex mechanical arm holdouts like the one shown in the picture below can be adapted with a range of accessories for cards, dice, daub or small mirrors, but devices like this will surely be found if the cheat is fully searched. Although risky, it allows the small reflector to be secretly introduced and invisibly removed at will, so the hands can be shown empty at any stage, and may prove useful if the cheat senses supiscion from another player. Numerous other methods can be employed to invisibly introduce or ditch the secret reflector during play.
A great true account of two cheats facing off against each other, one playing "paper" (marked cards) and the other playing the light, can be found in the must-read book Confessions of a Cross-road Gambler, by Gentleman Jack Newton. In this fascinating tale, Genetlman Jack meets his match in Mexican cheat Humberto who reveals a diabolical "hide" for his glim.
I have a few favourite techniques using a "shiner" including the one shown in the photograph above which is a great way to use the shiner to peek the bottom card. The reflector shown is a small round mirror, and can be found in packets of 20-30 in most craft stores for less than a couple of bucks. A small amount of adhesive can be appied to the back of the mirror to make it easier to keep concealed while holding the hand in a more natural position, but it can be used without adhesive as shown above instead by holding the mirror with the flesh of the palm, similar to the way you'd "palm" a poker chip. This technique and a bunch of other shiner moves and applications can be found in the book Details of Deception (p113-117).
