card sharp

noun

ˈkärd-ˌshärp

variants or cardsharp or especially formerly cardsharper

ˈkärd-ˌshär-pər

plural card sharps or cardsharps also cardsharpers

: a person who makes money by cheating at card games : card shark

An Italian card sharp who used infra-red contact lenses to count cards marked with invisible ink has been jailed for two years.—

Henry Samuel

Fields folded in on himself like a cardsharp checking the aces up his sleeve …—

Richard Alleva

There was no evil which they would not believe of Mazarin, that he was a thief, a cardsharper, a perverted libertine …—

H. A. L. Fisher

also : a skilled card player

… 350 big-time cardsharps convened last week for the 29th annual World Series of Poker at Binion's Horseshoe hotel and casino … —

Tricia Laine and Andrew Essex

Examples of card sharp in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web And there is possibly no American actor more suited than Mr. Mays to shuffling through the dozens of players in Dickens’s celebrated tale with the ease of a cardsharp. —

Charles Isherwood, WSJ, 23 Nov. 2022 The yarn Guimarães tells about encountering one of his idols, a storied cardsharp who could effortlessly pull off any sleight of hand necessary to tilt a high-stakes game in his favor, gets lost in the shuffle of the show’s activities. —

Los Angeles Times, 13 Dec. 2020

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'card sharp.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.