Green on Marked Cards
Johnathan “Captain” Green was a riverboat gambler in the 19th century in the US. He made his money cheating suckers at cards up and down the river.
One night, after watching a group of players sweep bibles and other religious paraphernalia off of the table in order for them to play cards, he saw the light and gave up card cheating.
From then on, he made his living travelling America demonstrating how endemic cheating was at the time.
He even made the assertion that every single deck of cards in America was marked. He claimed that bribed factory workers were marking all decks of cards at the source.
He demonstrated this incredible fact by reading the marks off of the back of every deck he was handed. He could identify the face of any card by looking at the back. Any brand of cards, he could read them.
However, today it is believed that Green was exaggerating his claim. Even if every deck was marked, there is no way he could know every single code and marking in use.
Instead, historians believe that Green was cheating in his expose of cheating. He was using a small mirror or ’shiner’ to determine what the cards were without looking at them.
He cheated in his demonstration of cheating in order to show how much people cheat.
For more on Green, read his memoir - “The Reformed Gambler” as well as David Britland’s “Phantoms of the Card Table.”