March31
Gambling Problem
Archive for March, 2010
March30
A New Puzzle
Tugboat Thompson, the illegitimate grandson son of Titanic Thompson, is hustling suckers. Unlike his famous grandfather, who made and lost a fortune playing golf, Tugboat makes his money playing ping pong.
His favourite swindle is to play an average game against his opponent, losing the match. He then offers a large bet on the next game. Not only that, he’ll play left handed instead of right handed.
Little does the mark know, Tugboat is actually a southpaw and plays better with his left hand.
It’s down to the final point when disaster strikes. The ball flies off the table and down a small hole in the concrete floor.
The hole is only 20cm deep but it is only 5cm wide. The ball is plainly visible but there is no way to get it out by hand.
The sucker is just about to call the game off when Tugboat makes an odd claim.
“I reckon I get that ball out.”
“What have you got? A coathanger? BBQ tongs?”
“Nothing. I’m gonna reach down and pick it up.”
“What are you going to use?”
“Nothing. Just what god gave me.”
“And you think you can pick the ball up?”
“Sure can. In fact, I’m willing to make a $100 side bet I can do it.”
“Deal!”
A few minutes later, Tugboat is $100 richer.
How did he do it?
Mister PP - Funniest man with ping pong balls
March28
African Con Men
My old friend Pablo is currently living in Africa. He sent me this email.
I saw a cool con in Kitui. People had told me there were street performers in town who did circus stunts. Wow, I thought. Gotta find these guys. When I finally did, it wasn’t quite what I expected. They are snake oil salesmen. There are a few of them doing very similar shows. They start with acrobatics or something to get a big crowd. Then they mention that they are qualified doctors (they show their certificates!), and they spend ages expounding the benefits of their amazing cure-all blood purifier! Plus, they demonstrate it’s efficacy! They put some purple dye in a bottle of water, representing impurities in your blood. Then they add some of their cure-all, and the water turns clear again! Proof! I assume the purple stuff is .
It would be okay if they were ripping off tourists, but they’re not. There’s no tourists in Kitui. They’re preying on poor locals who are used to believing anything a ‘professional’ educated person says. And their potion is supposed to cure malaria, cancer, AIDS, TB, etc etc etc, so they’re also killing anyone who uses their magic liquid instead of going to the doctor.
March26
Dog playing the shell game
March25
The Human Blockhead
One of my great idols is Melvin Burkhardt, the man that Ripley’s Believe it or Not dubbed “The Human Blockhead”. This classic sideshow stunt was made famous by Melvin through out his life working the midway.
This video of Melvin perform the blockhead in his 80’s is fantastic. He really pounds that nail in there.
March24
Today on ABC Radio
We had plenty of callers ringing to complain about a scratch card in a major newspaper on the weekend. Everyone who scratches, wins. The catch is you need to text or call a $20 premium number to find out you only won a free ring tone. One caller managed to get his money back by complaining.
An Indian man has been wandering the streets of Melbourne claiming he can read fortunes. He’d write a prediction on a small piece of paper and then ask victims what their favourite flower and number was. He always got it right leading to several women giving him $20 and $50 notes. To find out how he did it, talk to this man or head over to the Melbourne Magic Festival.
Plenty of callers has been infected by a worm attached to a facebook message. The email claimed that their facebook password had been changed. It was also asked “how can you tell what is a real page and what is a hoax page. The key is to look at every between the http:// and the next / . The address reads from right to left. So scam.facebook.com would be a real site as it falls under the facebook.com domain. facebook.scam.com would be a fake site as it falls under the scam.com domain.
Finally, serial swindle Wayne Charters is behind bars after being found guilty of five counts of obtaining money by deception. He married a Rosebud woman and then convinced her to sell all her assets so they could move overseas together. He claimed to be an ASIO spy trying to escape the organisation. He got out of sleeping with her by claiming that he ‘didn’t believe in sex before marriage’ and ‘had a bad back.’
If you’ve got a scam question for the show, email me at sleightofhand@conman.com.au.
March23
Green on Marked Cards
Johnathan “Captain” Green was a riverboat gambler in the 19th century in the US. He made his money cheating suckers at cards up and down the river.
One night, after watching a group of players sweep bibles and other religious paraphernalia off of the table in order for them to play cards, he saw the light and gave up card cheating.
From then on, he made his living travelling America demonstrating how endemic cheating was at the time.
He even made the assertion that every single deck of cards in America was marked. He claimed that bribed factory workers were marking all decks of cards at the source.
He demonstrated this incredible fact by reading the marks off of the back of every deck he was handed. He could identify the face of any card by looking at the back. Any brand of cards, he could read them.
However, today it is believed that Green was exaggerating his claim. Even if every deck was marked, there is no way he could know every single code and marking in use.
Instead, historians believe that Green was cheating in his expose of cheating. He was using a small mirror or ’shiner’ to determine what the cards were without looking at them.
He cheated in his demonstration of cheating in order to show how much people cheat.
For more on Green, read his memoir - “The Reformed Gambler” as well as David Britland’s “Phantoms of the Card Table.”
March18
Scam from my mum
Big thanks to Jill Johnson (or ‘mum’ as I call her) for letting me know about the Duke of Cumberland hand in bridge/whist.
I remember seeing it in the James Bond film Moonraker not realising it was a real scam.
The Duke of Cumberland, son of George III was cheated using the same technique over two hundred years ago.
The card cheat dealt out the following hands to the four players.
| Partner of the Duke
|
||||||||||||||||||
| West Opponent Defender & Shill
|
East Opponent Dealer & Cheat
|
|||||||||||||||||
| The Duke of Cumberland
|
Without going into the details of the rules of whist vs bridge, in this hand, the Duke and his partner have more points than their competitors owing to the high number of royal cards in his hand.
This lead to him wagering 20,000 pounds on a single hand. That is close to a million dollars in today’s money.
However, it is possible for the East/West players to win all 13 tricks and take the money.
Which is exactly what happened.
“”The idea of the game is to give away all your money as fast as you can.” - Prince George (Blackadder)
March17
Today on ABC Radio
Today on Statewide Drive with Kathy Bedford we discuss:
Melbourne celebrities and high profile sports people taken for a ride in a ponzi style betting scam.
Taxi drivers accused of over charging tourists who pay by credit card.
Swindling trades people claim to have permission from RACV insurance to repair storm damaged houses. They ask fall (over) payment up for work they often don’t even complete.
I challenge Kathy to figure out the meanings of some old time con man lingo.
March16
“Now you’re on the trolley”
You ever wonder why con artist movies always use the same old time lingo you don’t hear anyone else? Ropers, Inside Men, Stings, Wires, Big Stores and Long Cons all exist in history and fiction but rarely in the real world.
The terms all come from The Big Con by David Maurer. It’s a lingo heaving exploration of 1930’s swindling that is the basis for all the great con artist fictions - The Sting, Hustle, Confidence etc.
It’s still used today by novelists and screenwriters as a source for scams, despite being seventy years old.
Here are some hokey old terms. Can you define them?
Electric Bar
Double Trays
Boodle
Juice
Broads
Shillaber
Tin Mittens
The Spud
Modern Old Time Con Man Whit “pop” Haydn