This is one of the earliest works describing card artifice. It describes how unsuspecting folks, and even those who are careful, are being lured into playing cards. Once they play, they are easy prey for card advantage players.
For example, a simple card trick is used and then explained to get the trust of the mark. The trick exposed is "The Three Knaves", where three knaves magically gather together after a cut even though one was returned to the top of the deck, the second to the middle, and the third to the bottom.
The subtitle reads:
Now daily practiced by sundry lewd persons called cony-catchers and crossbiters. Plainly laying open those pernicious sleights that hath brought many ignorant men to confusion. Written for the general benefit of all gentlemen, citizens, apprentices, country farmers and yeomen that may hap to fall into the company of such cozening companions. With a delightful discourse of the cozenage of colliers.
Spelling has been modernized.
1st edition 1591; PDF 23 pages.
word count: 13615 which is equivalent to 54 standard pages of text
