Palming cards is a technique that poker cheats use to secretly hide cards to move them from their hands to the deck or from the deck to their hands. This trick is typically used to cheat in games such as poker and blackjack.
The cheat simply places a card in the palm of their hand in order to conceal the card. A regular sized playing card is small enough to fit in a typical person’s hand, but usually fits better in larger hands. The fingers keep the top end of the card in place, while the cup of the palm holds the other end of the card in place.
Cheats don’t typically hold the card in their palm for very long, usually only long enough to conceal and move the card to a desired location. These locations may include a pants pocket, beneath themselves, on the floor, up a sleeve, etc. From this point, the cheat can choose when to put the hidden card into play by palming it and bringing it back into play.
This cheat is especially effective for players who use it in conjunction with the dealing extra cards trick. They may deal themselves 3 cards in a 2 card game and conceal the card that they do not want for that hand, either saving a good card for later or ditching a bad card until they can reinsert it into the deck.
