It’s difficult to read the title of this post without it sounding like a command or a plea.
But, it’s true.
You can follow me on facebook and get up to the minute news on blog posts, events, gigs and scams.
So do it.
Follow me on Facebook.
You want to know don’t you?
How to do it. How to win the lottery and never work again in your life.
Well it’s possible. All you need to know are the two magic words known only to a handful of MIT statisticians and gambling investment companies.
Rolldown Week.
Cash WinFall is a little known game run by the Massachusetts State Lottery. It’s a small lottery that peaks every now and again with jackpot of $2 million. If the jackpot doesn’t pay off, the rules say that the winnings need to be spread out over several smaller prizes over the next week.
Rolldown Week.
Suddenly, for one week, the usually small prizes at the bottom end of the lottery spike in value. For a very small window of time, the odds swing the direction of the saavy gambler.
Early on 12 July, an elderly woman named Marjorie Selbee walked into Billy’s Beer and Wine and bought 150,000 $2 tickets in the lottery, tying up the ticket printing machine for hours. So long as they purchased over $100,000 worth of tickets, Selbee on her husband Gerald were almost certain to turn a profit. Since her husband was also buying hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of tickets, this was pretty much a sure thing.
MIT-educated statistician Mohan Srivastava has claimed that, if someone was to buy 200,000 tickets during rolldown week, they could expect to make between $240,000 to $1.4 million in profit.
And the Selbees are not alone. A select group of gamblers make a very good living from playing the lottery during Rolldown Week.
Of course, now that the word is out and more and more people take advantage of this mathematical quirk, who knows how long the game will be profitable.
Are you game?
Have you ever been asked a sensitive questions on a supposedly private survey?
Do you still wet the bed?
Ever cheated on your partner?
Who is your favourite member of El Divo?
You’ve been told that the answers will be kept secret and no one will know what you responded but still….how honest are you prepared to be.
This was the problem faced by researchers in South Africa try to figure out what percentage of farmers shoot and kill leopards that come onto their property.
Bangor University researchers came up with a brilliant solution to the problem.
They had respondents on their survey secretly roll a dice before answering.
If they rolled a ONE, they were asked to answer YES, I have killed a leopard (regardless of the truth.)
If they rolled a SIX, they were asked to answer NO, I have not killed a leopard (again regardless of the truth.)
If they rolled a TWO, THREE, FOUR or FIVE, they were asked to answer honestly.
Because there was no way of knowing whether respondents had rolled a ONE or whether they had killed a leopard, the farmers felt comfortable telling the truth.
Because of the dice roll, the researchers were able to determine that, sadly, 19% of farmers have illegally killed a leopard.
And I thought dice were only useful for lying and cheating.
Appeared this morning on the TODAY show for the weather segment with Steve Jacobs.
Way too early in the morning to be doing complex sleight of hand.
This little article appeared in the Herald Sun in a feature about local performers at the Melbourne Magic Festival.
THE CON ARTIST
NICHOLAS J. JOHNSON
PRESENTING: Wanna Bet?
SIGNATURE TRICK: Three Disk Monte
He knows every scam, hustle and hoodwink there is, but Nicholas J. Johnson insists he uses his skills “for good rather than evil”.
Keep that in mind when “Australia’s Honest Con Man” props himself in the foyer of Northcote Town Hall and presents Wanna Bet? — a free, flim-flam guide to “best bar bets, proposition wagers and sneaky tricks”.
“I’ve been taught by the best,” he says. “Real card cheats, real con artists. Believe me, you’ll never have to pay for a drink again.”
We are now taking advance orders for the Three Disk Monte DVD documentary and disk set.
We’ve just sent the finished product to be produced and it looks amazing. Director/Producer Rob Mond has done an amazing job.
You can place your order here for the first edition limited edition set.
Orders will ship on 31 July.
A friend of mine drew this at two in the morning the other night.
I’ve dragged myself into the new millennium and set up a Facebook page.
Now, you can Like Me and write LOL and Epic and Fail etc.
This was emailed to me by a listener of the Scam of The Week radio show.
A police officer pulls a guy over for speeding and has the following exchange:
Officer: May I see your driver’s license?
Driver: I don’t have one. I had it suspended when I got my 5th DUI.
Officer: May I see the owner’s card for this vehicle?
Driver: It’s not my car. I stole it.
Officer: The car is stolen?
Driver: That’s right. But come to think of it, I think I saw the owner’s card in the glove box when I was putting my gun in there.
Officer: There’s a gun in the glove box?
Driver: Yes sir. That’s where I put it after I shot and killed the woman who owns this car and stuffed her in the trunk.
Officer: There’s a BODY in the TRUNK?!?!?
Driver: Yes, sir.
Hearing this, the officer immediately called his captain.
The car was quickly surrounded by police, and the captain approached the driver to handle the tense situation:
Captain: Sir, can I see your license?
Driver: Sure. Here it is.
It was valid.
Captain: Who’s car is this?
Driver: It’s mine, officer. Here’s the owner’ card.
The driver owned the car.
Captain: Could you slowly open your glove box so I can see if there’s a gun in it?
Driver: Yes, sir, but there’s no gun in it.
Sure enough, there was nothing in the glove box.
Captain: Would you mind opening your trunk? I was told you said there’s a body in it.
Driver: No problem.
Trunk is opened; no body.
Captain: I don’t understand it. The officer who stopped you said you told him you didn’t have a license, stole the car, had a gun in the glovebox, and that there was a dead body in the trunk.
Driver: Yeah, I’ll bet the liar told you I was speeding, too
I know, I know.
I’ve been promising the Three Disk Monte DVD and disk set for months.
After we reshot the DVD, we then shot some bonus material designed particularly for magicians.
The final cut is done and we are just waiting for our producer to return from the US so we can send the DVDs to print.
Once the DVD is finished, I can begin work on my other new project. A resource dedicated entirely to the Ten Card Poker Deal.
Watch this space.
I have a confession to make.
Every couple of weeks I get together with a group of my friends and play the game ‘Werewolf’.
For the uninitiated, Werewolf is a party game in which two of the people in the room are secretly werewolves. This role is randomly selected by picking names out of hat. The rest of the group are villagers. It is the goal of the werewolves to kill as many villagers as possible and the goal of the villagers to stop them.
What I do for fun.
At the beginning of each round the werewolves choose a player to slaughtered. By the end of the round, the villagers must choose which of the group are the werewolves and lynch one person. If all of the villagers are slaughtered or accidentally lynch, the werewolves win.
There is no board or pieces or turns. Essentially, the game revolves around a group of adults shouting rash accusations and spouting paranoid theories at one another trying to decide which of the group is really a Twilight extra.
But that is not the confession.
The confession is that I am not very good at Werewolf.
I am almost always slaughtered in the very first round of lynching.
The problem is that my friends assume that I am liar. After all, I’m Australia’s Honest Con Man. I lie and cheat for a living. I’m supposedly an expert on such matters. I clearly can’t be trusted.
If my defense is weak, my friends see this as proof that I am lying and hang me up by my metaphorical neck.
If my defense is convincing, my friends see this as proof because, only a really good liar would make such a compelling argument.
Regardless of what I do, I always find myself sitting out the rest of the game.
Just a little game among friends
So what’s the lesson? Am I just a terrible liar? No, I’m quite a good liar. Outside of the game, I convince my friends all sorts of ridiculous stories. For example, I’m currently trying to spread the rumour that Chinese people eat Venus Fly Traps but, due to pollution in China, the species is dying out leading to a growth in the Australian Venus Fly Trap market. After all, we have so many flies here.
In reality, people see a lie when they are looking for one. Regardless of whether the person is telling the truth or not. According to a study by Richard Wiseman in his book Quirkology, most people’s ability to spot a lie is no better than luck. But if we believe someone is lying, we find all sorts of evidence to prove that claim. We see twitching fingers, darting eyes and sweaty brows because we need to.
It’s why, when we hear about the latest scams and swindles that we can’t believe someone would actually fall for that lie. We are looking for the lie and so we see it clearly.
In short, I’ll never be good at Werewolf because my friends know I am not to be trusted. And without a solid lead or piece of evidence to go on, they do what everyone does in that situation, they lynch the dodgy looking guy.
I’m not a werewolf, I’m a scapegoat.
At least, that’s what I want you to believe…
Besides, I don’t have the six pack to be a werewolf