Poker Cut Cards

Exposing the bottom card of a deck of playing cards is a common mistake made by inexperienced dealers during home poker games. For this reason, you should probably use a cut card which is placed under the bottom of the deck to prevent the bottom card from being seen. Cut cards are always used in casino's and you will sometimes see a dealer holding the deck upside-down, knowing that the bottom card cannot be seen through the cut card.

The common practice when using a cut card is to place the cut card on the poker table next to the recently shuffled deck of cards. The player who cuts the cards places a stack of cards from the full deck on top of the cut card. The dealer then places the remainder of the deck on top of the cards that have been cut and begins to deal.

A cut card that is found to be mistakenly included in the deck with the cards in play is treated as a scrap of paper and ignored. Inform all the players of what has happened and then continue dealing.

Cut cards are usually made of plastic and are the same size and shape as a playing card. You need a different size cut card for bridge-size (narrow) decks than you do for poker-size (wide) decks. Many of the playing card suppliers automatically include a cut card, of the correct size, when you buy a deck of quality playing cards. You can make your own homemade cut card out of a thin piece of plastic, wood, or metal or you can tape two jokers together, back-to-back.

Cut cards

The most common colors of cut cards are red, black, yellow, blue, and green. The color of your cut card should contrast with the color of your playing cards. You want to be able to easily see the cut card to make sure that it does not get mixed up into the deck with the cards in play. Cut cards are usually shiny on one side (card #1 below) and flat on the other side (card #2 below).

Cut cards

The blue cut card on the far right has sharper corners and is thicker and slightly larger than the average cut card. It is firmer and does not bend as easily as the other cut cards. Unfortunately, I cannot remember where I obtained this cut card. I do not like it any better than the other cut cards, it is a bit too inflexible.

Trying to tear a plastic cut card will result in a bend that makes the cut card almost unusable. It will not rip, but the bend will probably not go away. They seem to last a very long time but will eventually become too bent and misshapen to be used effectively.

Cut cards cost anywhere from 25� to $1 each, depending on how many you buy at the same time. You can buy them individually or in sets of up to 100.

Cara Gail's Cut Cards

I received some cut cards made of paper from Cara Gail's. The colors are much better than the plastic cut cards. A bi-color orange/red cut card is shown to the left and a lighter shade of blue is shown on the right. These cut cards are made of paper, rather than plastic, so will rip if you really try. The paper cut cards are not yet shown on the Cara Gail's website but should be available in late February. Cara Gail's also stocks the typical plastic cut cards.

Cara Gail's Heavy Cut Cards

These are your everyday normal poker cut cards ... except thicker! They are smooth on one side and textured on the other side.

These cut cards measure 64mm x 88mm. Ten heavy cut cards were 5.04mm thick (10 normal cut cards were 3.83mm thick). Out of curiosity, I checked the thickness of the cut cards shown on the far right of the second set of images on this page - they were 1mm thick, much too thick and inflexible. These cut cards are much more flexible and the corners are much more rounded.

They come in convenient plastic packaging making it easy to hang on a display hook. These are the first white cut cards that I have seen. The cut cards cost $10.95 for a package of 30 in either poker size or bridge size. They are made in China.