This is fun to write about. So I google searched for “Tetra-Red” the other day on March 1, 2024, to see where it might be mentioned. And as you can guess the search results were flooded with a bunch of cute little red tetra fish — many of them cardinal tetras. (The stack name is actually based off the words “Tetradistic” and “Redford” as the memdeck is both tetradistic and compatible with The Redford Stack.) Anyways I thought a tetra fish would be a neat logo to add to the first page of the book, and proceeded with a mock up. George Tait — a.k.a. Patrick Redford — has such a kind heart, he surprised me with a piece of art he painted for me on March 3, 2024. That’s his painting on the first page of this book. I absolutely love it! He based it off of the clipart mock up I had made and turned it into something truly beautiful. He painted it in a virtual reality environment, with a virtual palette and easel, VR headset and all — so this is an unusual and special piece of art and I feel privileged to have it in the book!
The bubbles coming from the fish are in CHaSeD order as you probably already observed. This tetra fish is actually a Cardinal Tetra fish, which a very common & popular tetra. The name cardinal means deep red like the bird. However, there is neon blue in the fish as well, but this is okay since it fits in fine with the theme, as many of us — including myself — use primarily both red back and blue back Bicycle playing cards. I also like that the fish has the word “card” in it as this is a book entirely devoted to the pasteboards. Card-in-Al tetra. Card-in-Allan’s tetradistic memdeck? — Tetra-Red is Allan Ackerman’s memdeck of choice.
What’s even more interesting about having a red fish on the cover of this book is there is a false shuffle by Patrick Redford called “The Redfish Shuffle”. It is a variant of Dan Fishman’s False Shuffle. I use the Redfish Shuffle extensively in this book. And by the way, without Dan Fishman both The Redford Stack as well as Tetra-Red wouldn’t exist; read the page titled, Credit to Dan Fishman.