Part I: Card Game Cheating · CARD MARKING METHODS
One-Way Decks
How it works
A one-way deck has backs that are not the same when a card is turned end for end. A picture, a border, or a logo that does not mirror gives the orientation away. Someone who turns chosen cards one way, and the rest the other way, can tell those cards from the back without adding a mark. This is not edge sorting, which uses a small printing difference already on a symmetrical design, and it is not a mark added with ink or a blade.
Where it appears
Poker, blackjack, baccarat, and any game in which card backs stay in view
On the record
Regulators treat a reversible back as a card-security requirement, not as a curiosity. The June 2022 Saskatchewan standard is a regulator’s own rule. This entry does not rest on a named criminal case.
Detection & preventionADVISORY
The paid halfHow a monitoring room catches one-way decks, and what stops it recurring, written for the desk, not the reader.
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Published as a detection reference for surveillance, compliance and gaming-operations professionals. Thresholds and tuning are set by the property. Nothing here is instruction: the method is described so it can be recognised.