Any backup for Pro21's reference to stackers?

In a thread below, Pro21 suggests that the Stacker Play chapter of Get The Edge At Blackjack is a reprise of methods used as far back as the 1950's.

The technique, as I wrote it, is a method of ordering cards via deviations from playing strategy and physical re-ordering in handheld games, for the purposes of creating card sequences which can be predicted after the shuffle, without the need for memorization as with other forms of shuffle analysis. It is nothing to do with the cheating technique of hi-lo stacking, which is used by crooked dealers.

Pro21 offers no sources for his assertion, indeed he says none exist. He does not describe the method used. I find this very difficult to believe, because rough basic strategy and card-counting were known only to a small cabal of players during these years,let alone more sophisticated methods.

Can anyone offer support for Pro21's claim?

John, I have no way to document this. I have a close friend and playing partner we will call Joe. Joe's Father and Uncle were crossroaders back in the 50s and 60s. Some years back Joe approached me with this move as something his father and Uncle had played. We gave it some thought and abandoned it for other things. (If we hadn't I never would have mentioned anything about the move.) Joe's Father and Uncle played very little of this in favor of switchies and coolers which they found much more lucrative.

If you choose to believe I am making this up that is fine but I think you will find that there are many moves that are so old they are new again.

If you choose to believe I am making this up that is fine but I think you will find that there are many moves that are so old they are new again.

I wouldn't have bothered asking if I thought you were making it up.
I am fascinated by gambling history and loved reading about the old time pre-war ace-chasers and ten-count players, one of the reasons
I got into gambling in the first place.

There was an older, and quite wealthy ex-Golden Nugget Dealer, of American Indian heiritage, that was a pointholder in the pre-Wynn days, that described similar methods to myself in 1981--but saying they only applied in his opinion to deliberate stacking methods. Credit should be given to the paper cited by Don as to mathematical analysis of such plays, but to you SHOULD go the credit for applying these methods to today's possibilitys (OK try that and I will....). There are many jurisdictions where the policing of the pit's integrity leaves much to be desired!

I have a copy of a classic written by a professional called E.S Andrews who decribed sequencing his book along with many other illegal advantage play techniques.
He didn't write the book in his real name and so you will not be able to find it under E.S Andrews.

How the secret book was found:

As fate would have it, once upon a time young NA was walking along a quiet mysterious yellow bricked road when a cold breeze directed him to a little bookshop. It looked dark inside from the windows. NA opened the squeaky door and discovered a little solitary box behind the door. Inside the box was a book dated back to the 1920's, the title was obscured but closely examining the first few pages, NA learnt that it was written by a professional advantage player in the post-war period. Only after completing 3 challeges set by the weakly old shopkeeper did NA get to keep the book and learnt the little known secrets of many advantage play techniques.

The book is authored under S.W.Erdnase. You might be able to find it in Amazon.com these days.

Expert at the Card Table by S. W. Erdanese was written in 1902. There is a brilliant book by Darwin Ortiz called The Annotated Erdanese where he takes the original book page by page and discusses each move and elaborates with photographs. For history buffs there is another interesting book called The Man Who Was Erdanese by Whaley, Gardner, & Busby in which they make a case for erdanese being a crossroader named Milton Andrews. Some magicians disagree and have other candidates for the real Erdanese but the book is still interesting reading.

But the main thread was not about absolute origination, but on application credit. We probably both know the "Joe" you cite. There is much information that you have given that points to a specific individual that I really don't feel comfortable in specifying--unlike some who feel that knowing a person gives them leave to "finger."

The person I knew made almost the same claims you quoted him making, back in 1981, and though probably deceased, I will only go so far as to say they were:

A 1950s era cross-roader, involved in enforcing losses on non-connected casinos.

Claimed to have been knowledgable about early 10 count pioneers.

Worked at the 4- Queens with the group of floormen brought in by Charles Kosslov (now deceased), from working together in the last pre-Wynn days of the Golden Nugget, and on the "straight crew" used by (the name escapes me for a moment, now owns the MGM-Mirage embarassing to forget!) K., when he owned the Flamingo, to clean-up similar problems.

Claimed to have moved high 7 figures past the IRS to over-seas, from winnings, and was working to show current income not wanting to repatirate winnings too soon.

Also worked a team venture with another who worked as a supervisor at the Riverside in Laughlin's poker room, in several tell team 21 plays.

That Mr. K of course would be Kerkorian sorry about the lapse there.

If Pro21 wants to email me I can give him details privately. What was most interesting was not the claimed money invovled which he confirmed, but the details he gave on how cross-roaders of that era would be used by the mob to crack down on casinos that wanted to back-out of skim arrangements without violence--bad for business. One claim he made was that initially claims of counting were thought by the mob to be cover for cheating. Thorp mentioned this too. But most of all Joe, and his name really was Joe, was interesting on how cheaters operated in the period from 1965 to 1985, when the mob was bought out after their fronts were run out, and how the old crews, used to operate and how they went straight, in that grey area of Nevada Gaming policy involving people, once involved with the mob with cheating and bust-out games elsewhere, who apparently, at least to the NV authorities, remained clean in Nevada.