The Gaming Table Volume 2
by Andrew Steinmetz

This second volume of The Gaming Table is from a magician's point of view much more interesting. It includes a history of dice and playing cards including a fairly detailed description of how playing cards were made. It has a chapter on fortune telling with cards. And it also features a surprisingly good chapter on card tricks with explanations for four sleights (false shuffle, false cut, glide, card change) and 18 very nice card tricks. Among them we find a version of the prearranged deck and two person codes.

For people interested in Erdnase it is interesting to note that at the beginning of the card trick section Steinmetz uses the uncommon idiom "gift of the gab" just as Erdnase uses it at the beginning of the legerdemain section in his The Expert at the Card Table. Both write it with quotes. The overlap in vocabulary is not limited to this one phrase. There are also extra textual similarities which are surprising. It suggests that Erdnase was familiar with and perhaps even fond of this book by Steinmetz.

• CHAPTER I. Chevaliers D’industrie, Or Polite Sharpers.
  • Caught In A Trap
  • An Attorney ‘Done’ By A Gambler
  • A Very Curious Story
  • Skittle Sharpers
• CHAPTER II. Professional Gamesters And Their Frauds.
  • Cheating At Whist
  • Card Telegraphy
• CHAPTER III. Anecdotes Of The Passions And Vicissitudes Of Gamesters.
  • Unfortunate Winning
  • Lord Worthall’s Desperate Wager
  • The Celebrated Thaddeus Stevens
  • A Provident Gambler
  • A Magnificent Fortune Wasted
  • An Enterprising Clerk
  • Gambling For Recruits For The Army
  • Doubling The Stakes
  • An Annuity For A Gambling Debt
  • Sir William Colepepper
  • The Biter Bitten
  • Hunted Down
  • Coming Of Age
  • Heavy Liabilities To Begin With
  • A Gentleman Turned Barber
  • Pensioned Off By A Gaming House
  • How Many Gamesters Live By Play?
• CHAPTER IV. Atrocities, Duels, Suicides, And Execution Of Gamblers.
  • Sir John Bland, Of Kippax Park
  • Lord Mountford
  • A Suicide Robbing Peter To Pay Paul
  • Revelations Of A Gambler On The Point Of Committing Self-Murder
  • Incorrigible
  • Suicide In 1816
  • Other Instances
  • ‘If I Lose I Shall Commit Suicide’
  • Suicide At Verdun
  • ‘In At The Death’
  • A Gambler Pawning His Ears
  • A Gambler Submitting To Be Hanged
  • Two Gamblers Tossing Who Should Hang The Other
  • Gambling Duels In The Year 1818
  • Gaming Duel At Paris, 1827
  • The End Of A Gamester
  • Duel With A Sharper
  • Major Oneby And Mr Gower
  • The Nephew Of A British Peer
  • Edward Wortley Montagu And The Jew Abraham Payba
  • Dr William Dodd
  • Captain Davis
  • Desperate Career Of Henry Weston
  • Arthur Thistlewood
  • Fountleroy, The Forger
  • Gambling For Life
  • One Of Many Instances
  • Thurtell, The Murderer
  • A Most Wonderful End Of A Gambler
  • A Sad Reminder
  • George IV
• CHAPTER V. Oddities And Witticisms Of Gamblers.
  • Ostentatious Gamesters
  • ‘An Insinuating, Elegant Gamester’
  • A Penitent Sonnet,
  • Love And Gambling
  • ‘Manners Make The Man’
  • Sharp Practice—Not By An Attorney
  • A Gamester To The Back-Bone
  • Foote’s Witticisms
  • Effect Of A Severe Loss At Play
  • Paddy’s Decision
  • Gambling Caused By Grief
  • A Gambler’s Excuse For Not Being A Second In A Duel
  • ‘More Fortunate’
  • Captain Roche
  • Faro At Routs
  • Prospect Of £5200 Per Annum From A Capital Of £2000
  • Of What Trade Is A Gaming-House Keeper?
  • The Game Played In The Court Of Chancery
  • The Original Of A Recent Proposal
  • Game And Gambling
  • Catching A Tartar
  • ‘Not Knowing Your Man’
  • A Blind Gamester
  • A Noble Lord And A Commoner, In 1823
  • Diamond Cut Diamond
  • A Tender Mother
  • Two Masters Of The Art
• CHAPTER VI. The Gaming Clubs.
  • 1. Almack’s
  • 2. The Cocoa-Tree Club
  • 3. Graham’s Club
  • 4. Brookes’ Club, In St James’s Street
  • 5. White’s Club
  • 6. Wattier’s Club
  • 7. Crockford’s Club
  • 8. The Travellers’ Club
• CHAPTER VII. Doings In Gaming Houses.
  • Coffee-House Sharpers
  • Miller’s Gaming House
  • Attacks On Gaming Houses
  • ‘Something Honourable To The British Flag’
  • Coarse Language Of Gamesters
  • Boasted Protection Of Great Names To Gaming Houses
  • Fortunate Rise Of A Club-House Waiter
  • Play In 1820
  • Account Of A Game At Hazard
  • Progress In The Gaming Trade
  • Play In 1838
  • Statistics Of Gambling In 1844
  • Desperation At Gaming Houses
  • ‘Devilish Doings In A “Hell”’
  • Gaffing
  • Tommy Dodd
  • Gambling At The Wine And Oyster Rooms, Or ‘Saloons’
  • Cards That Would Beat The D—L Himself!
  • Generosity (?) Of A Gaming House Keeper
  • Hospitality Of Gaming Houses, And Popularity Of City Men At Them
  • The Traffic In Hush Money
  • Walking Off With A £200 Bank-Note
  • Perquisites Of Gambling House Waiters
  • Paul Roubel
  • Titled Greeks, Or ‘Decoys’
  • Why Cheats Were Called Greeks
  • Gaming Table Slang And Manoeuvres
  • Specimen Of A Quasi Gaming House Circular
• CHAPTER VIII. The Doctrine Of Probabilities Applied To Gambling.
• CHAPTER IX. The History Of Dice And Cards.
  • Cards
• CHAPTER X. Piquet, Basset, Faro, Hazard, Passe-Dix, Put, Cross And Pile, Thimble-Rig.
  • Piquet
  • Basset
  • Faro, Or Pharaoh
  • Hazard
  • Passe-Dix
  • Put
  • Cross And Pile
  • Thimble-Rig
• CHAPTER XI. Cock-Fighting.
• CHAPTER XII. The Turf, Historical, Social, Moral.
• CHAPTER XIII. Fortune-Telling By Cards (For Ladies).
  • Fortune-Telling Forty Years Ago; Or, The Story Of Martha Carnaby
• CHAPTER XIV. Amusing Card Tricks.
  • Preliminary Hints
  • Tricks
    1. To tell a card thought of by a party after three deals
    2. The four inseparable kings
    3. The barmaid and the three victimizers
    4. How to name every card in a pack successively turned up by a second party, and win every trick at a hand of Whist
    5. Two persons having each drawn a card and replaced them in the pack, to guess these cards
    6. Twenty cards being arranged upon a table, a person thinks of two, and you undertake to guess them
    7. To tell a card thought of without even looking at the cards
    8. A person having thought of one of fifteen cards presented to him, to guess the card thought of
    9. Two persons having each drawn a card from a pack, and having replaced them, to tell these cards after the pack has been shuffled and cut by the spectators as often as they like
    10. Singular arrangement of sixteen cards
    11. The seven trick
    12. Infallible method for guessing any number that a party has thought of
    13. The card that cannot be found
    14. Cards being drawn from a pack, to get them guessed by a person blindfolded
    15. The mystery of double sight
    16. Guessing
    17. The Arithmetical Puzzle
    18. To get a card into a pack firmly held by a party

1st edition 1870, 444 pages; PDF 180 pages.
word count: 85983 which is equivalent to 343 standard pages of text