I thought for a minute someone was going to play Mississippi Stud.
The best bang for your buck as long as you only mark the JACKS.

No. Do you?

Gotta admit, when it comes to scintillating conversation you can't beat The Gambling Spot.

Got to agree with that.

WELL... I do make daub now, and to answer my own questions and others (for any future readers):

The formulas are still relevant, they do not dull the back of the card if made properly and it definitely was NOT hard to do. Quite easy actually.

I have used both formulas in the litzau book (permanent and temporary) and they both work well. Some modifications may be needed depending on what pigments you get. It is not necessary to buy actual aluminum powder anymore as art stores have many metallic pigments available which can achieve the same goal.

Substitutions are available for almost every ingredient I've tried so far. I have not obtained any pure ingredients listed in the formula, only products available on the market with the listed ingredients in them, or simply googled substitutions for said ingredients, and they all worked perfectly fine. 99% of the ingredients are available at Walmart. Powdered pigments are available in a wide variety of colors in art stores. No need to mix your own colors.

some insoluble powders do not work with the given formulas. My assumption is that an entirely different formula must be used which is not listed in litzau or any other book I have seen recently.
I have an idea as to what could work based on my recent experience with making Daub; if you experiment with them too, you should gain enough knowledge to make any altercations you may need.

Nothing covers the work like a good altercation.

Litzau's book is interesting, and indeed has been on my shelf for ages ... but it's hardly a reference work worthy of recommendation.
I'm all for good conversation, but lets at least try and be real.

Does daub for magic or for idle experimentation have any relevancy?
Maybe I'm missing something?

Most paper players today who try to play amateur homemade or huckster bought online-daub or juice still get caught very quickly, and the real guys playing real paper don't tip, sell, give away, or post their formulas on the fricking Gambling Spot!

Considering most of the formulas in the book require some type of alcohol as a solvent, I would agree that it is not a book I would recommend. I only wanted it for the daub formula to understand what consistency daub typically is or used to be (never having bought, tried or used daub before).

As for relevancy, you are missing something because I never mentioned my full intentions behind wanting to experiment with these formulas.
Apart from what I mentioned to Jason, I have one other use I was intending to experiment with which would be geared to magicians/demo guys in the end if it works out.
As I've eluded to in some of the previous posts, I am trying to make a daub which will be able to spread a non dissolvable pigment. Why? (*Channeling doc*) Simply because it's application in a suspension solution is complicated and decays or degrades (falls off the card) eventually, and does not spread evenly. My hopes were that a daub-like substance could make a more even application, and make re application easier for the end user. This kind of marking has nothing to do with typical Daub work and marking cards during games.

As for your last paragraph... Now I think I'm missing something, maybe you can fill me in?
I understand there would be varying qualities of daub, some non permanent when you may want a permanent marking, some apply too heavy, some apply too light... And I understand some varieties of daub are just specific brands and types of makeup.. But if you have something that applies a subtle visible -only to the marker- marking, what would make this any worse than "real paper player's" daub? If the marks are the same, then the daub, for all intents and purposes... Is the same?
And for this I just mean to compare a "hucksters" Silver daub vs a "real paper player's" Silver daub.

Maybe you mean they don't use any type of Daub which is available to the public? Like IR or UV or any other types of luminous ink systems or fantastical magical pigments in daub form?... Which was one of my original intentions as well... To craft new daub recipes that I have never seen or heard of in public.

Any way you put it, I don't understand the separation between what I could make while experimenting, and what "real paper players" could have made during their own experiments. Please explain.

P.s. no one actually did tip anything here Besides the use of powdered aluminum, which isn't even needed anymore anyway.

Lol woops, I meant alterations

On p. 70 of Bruce Lee's The Tao of Jeet Kune Do is this quote: "Before I learned the art, a punch was just a punch, and a kick, just a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick, no longer a kick. Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a kick."

To paraphrase for the slow students: When you first get into some new discipline, you don't know enough to make any reasonable claims or distinctions. Then you study, and you spend a period of time able to elucidate ALL of the distinctions and various techniques to the nth degree. Although you might not realize it, this is the time when you run a risk of missing the forest for the trees. But then once you approach mastery, you start to realize that all of that specificity can actually get in the way of real understanding. You take a step back and start to consider things as they really are - divorced from specifics, you can categorize things and think about them in new ways. And these "new" ways of thinking often involve simplifying techniques back down to their core attributes. Hence, all punches start to look alike to you again (and you have no trouble dealing with them).

There are a lot of lessons in that quote that can be applied to almost any physical skill: magic, music, billiards, martial arts, and yes, gambling techniques.

When you first hear about something like daub, it's easy to to think they're all the same: just some substance that doesn't belong on the back of the cards placed there to tell you the value. Then, as you "progress" to stage 2, you start to get caught up in all the different formulas and systems for playing daub. (It sounds like you're in stage 2 now, Cliff.) At stage 3, you start "seeing" daub in all sorts of things: a child's crayon or magic marker, a spot of makeup or lipstick, a tin of watercolors or a tube of chapstick. And you realize then, it's all the same crap.

Jason

Or as Rick Estrin said about novice harmonica players trying to play Little Walter’s “Juke”, ‘how could they play it? They can’t even HEAR it yet.’

Or as Rod the Hop once put it to me, "Daub isn't SOMETHING you put on the back of the cards to tell you their value, daub is ANYTHING you put on the back of the cards to tell you their value."

It wasn't long after he told me that that I stopped caring all that much about daub formulas.

Jason

I recollect a young man putting the same question to Eddie the Daub. Son, he said I would not use anything too fancy to be passed off as an accident. Normally if a croupier in a game discovers what seems to be daub on a card or two the croupier will ask, has somebody been reading a newspaper on got ink on their hands and then ask the players to show their hands. He will call for a new deck and that will be the end it.

Technically that is true, even chewing gum on the back of a card would qualify as daub under that definition. But the statement is too simplistic, vague and somewhat tongue in cheek. A more complete and correct definition for daub is something that you can put on the back of cards that tell you their values without the other parties suspecting, detecting or knowing something is there.

That is not only a different concept, it is a considerably different concept.



I think you are correct and for magicians, gambling experts and demonstrators that are basically exposing or showing the concept of daub, or maybe using it in their magic tricks, it doesn’t really matter what they show or use, as long as it does not reach the point of absurdity. Most in the demonstrator category have never been there or have any intention of going for the money with what they are exposing so it does not really matter what they show or use in that situation.

However, for those who actually do get the money with daub in say a casino environment and are actually successful in doing so over a period to time, then I would strongly suggest they might care a great deal about their formula, i.e. does it breaks the glaze on the back of the card, is it permanent or will it disappear over time, can it be detected by camera surveillance or with black light and so on.

It's not a different concept if not getting caught/suspected/etc is an a priori assumption. Put another way, "No sh*t, Sherlock."

As for casino environments, we've already determined that's not what the OP is interested in. If it was, I'd have given an answer that more closely resembles yours.

I'm still talking to Cliff.

Jason

I like that response. It comes from a position of supposed higher authority, demeans the content of the post and the person writing it, and obviates the necessity of further rational discussion.



Perhaps you would have and perhaps not. I don’t know what you level of expertise on this particular subject is. However, I would suggest the discussion and concepts herein encompass the totality of the thread unless you specifically address someone directly.

The conjurer, of course, can use daub to mark the face, rather than the back, of a selected card.

Not to mention the edge.

Daub is normally applied by hand, but of course, it does not have be as it can be hidden in say a modified cash chip or card guard etcetera and applied directly to the card from that, perhaps without getting the hands dirty.

Thanks for the thoughts and wisdom Jason. I appreciate that you feel as though you know where I am in these stages because you possibly followed a similar path, however I would have to disagree with your placement of me in these stages.

I don't want to be disrespectful, but I think you might have the wrong idea about where I am at. Also I feel there are conflicting idea here regarding what daubs are. (One side says there's good daub and huckster daub, the other says "anything is daub, and that's what the pros say")

first, your assumptions are based on the idea that I am curious about daub to USE it as daub, or more accurately: to find out *how daub is used*. However this is not the case. I am not "caught up" in daub formulas since I only know one. I mentioned complex or "fancy" daubs simply because I have special pigments coming in the mail which I hope to experiment with in as many ways possible within my reach. My curiosity partially reaches into these realms because I am interested in the science as well as their application to the hustling world.

I currently have a pigment which is insoluble. My interest in daub stemmed from an attempt to apply the pigment to a card with little success (and not even particularly to denote the value of the cards) . I speculated that possibly a daub substance could apply the pigment more efficiently, but had never seen any before.

(I'm not new to this discipline, I have known for a long time that daub can be any substance. I've heard the stories: ear wax, bit of coffee, newspaper, condensation on the glass of a drink, graphite, makeup and especially Chapstick. I have known for a while that I could just mix any dye with Chapstick to create a substance that creates a subtle stain on a card, even something as simple as Kool aid powder; Hence why I had never seen, purchased or attempted to make daub before. But the consistency of Chapstick is no good for my insoluble pigment)

Thus my search for a formula for real daub began so I could see what the consistency was and to judge if it would be good enough to apply an insoluble powder. Turns out, a classic daub formula is not good enough for my needs in this case.

My mention of an altered daub formula is essentially an entirely different substance than the classic daub and would likely never be used as an ad hoc marking system, but a system which requires pre marking. My purpose is not to learn about how a cheat uses Daub or possibly market daub to people whom I think are hustlers. My purpose is to mark a card in a specific way, in private, for a specific use with a pigment proving hard to work with.

My position is that of problem solving, not curiosity about how a cheat cheats.

Since my markings will still be applied to playing cards, I have to pay attention to previously mentioned details such as dulling or destroying the finish on a card, permanency of a mark vs temporary. Questions I didn't get answers to; therefore pushing me into seemingly getting "caught up" in daub formulas until I got my answers.

Learning a classic daub formula is just an other piece of information to keep under my hat that I learnt in the process of trying to solve my pigment problem, and that's pretty much where it ends... Apart from my experimentation with the "fancy" inks once I get them.

So, in the end, (and separate from me claiming not to be in one of these categories) since the general idea is that anything that marks a card secretly in play is daub, why is "huckster" daub any worse than "real paper player's" daub? If a real paper player can play paper, his technique should be that where any daub is good daub because his technique surpasses the lack of quality in the daub. However, if the daub can make a light marking subtle enough to act identically to what a real paper player would make WITHOUT the skill a pro paper player has, then that would be good daub...No matter who it comes from... No?

Daub is a word that describes the action of smearing. The substance smeared onto the card is a soft matter.

Your comment was silly and you know it. The other possibility is that everytime we discuss bottom deals or false shuffles around here you want me to clarify that I'm only talking about the ones the other guys DON'T notice.

Jason